LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



ShelfV 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE MODEL SUNDAY-SCHOOL 



A HANDBOOK OF 
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES 



BY (jS 

GEORGE M. BOYNTON 

Secretary of the 
Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society 



SEP 28 1892 



BOSTON AND CHICAGO 
Congrrgattonal surtflagsSdjnoI anfi Publishing Socittg 



36.T2.SoX 



The Lihr 

Ui Congress 



WASHINGTON 



,6 






Copyright, 1892, by 
Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society 



INTRODUCTION 



The aim of this book, which was suggested at the close of a long 
conference between the Secretary and the Missionary Superintend- 
ents of the Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 
is altogether practical. It has in mind, first of all, the hundreds 
who are called upon each year to superintend and to teach', who 
have had no experience in the work and little opportunity for obser- 
vation. Many of these are in the newer places where this is the 
first Christian work attempted and where there are no surrounding 
supports from sympathizing pastors or warm-hearted Christians. 
Others are in the older and larger places suddenly called to new 
positions of responsibility, and where they long for advice which 
may not be at hand just when they want it. 

The Sunday-school Conventions or Institutes cover this same 
ground, or parts of it, whenever they meet, but they meet only 
occasionally and can reach but a small fraction of those who need 
most the help they bring. This little book may aid in supplying 
the information and advice which come from such gatherings of 
earnest Christian workers. Of course it cannot arouse the en- 
thusiasm which comes from personal contact with those who are 
both wise and zealous and who "shed both warmth and light. And 
yet these pages have not been prepared without earnest sympathy 
with those who are trying to do what they can in this important 
department, nor witiiout a constant prayer that it may help to the 
great end for which alone the Sunday-school has a right to be. 

G. M. B. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 6 

CHAPTER I. 

Origin and Progress of the Sunday-school 7-16 

1. In its Organization . '7 

2. In its Systems of Study 9 

3. In its Relation to the Church 11 

4. In its Organization for Evangelistic Work 13 

CHAPTER II. 

The Sunday-school Defined ' 17-23 

1. What it is 17 

2. Its Aim 18 

3. Whom should it Include 19 

4. Its Various Orders 20 

CHAPTER III. 

The Sunday-school and the Home 24-29 

1. How the Home can Help the Sunday-school 24 

2. How to Secure the Cooperation of the Home 27 

3. How the Sunday-school may Help the Home ........ 27 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Sunday-school and the Church 30-42 

1. What the Church should do for the Sunday-school 30 

2. What the Sunday-school should do for the Church 39 

CHAPTER V. 

The Sunday-school and the Pastor 43-47 

1. The Pastor in the School 43 

2. The Pastor in the Pulpit 45 

3. The Pastor in the Parish 46 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Organization of the Sunday-school 48-51 

1. A Form of Constitution . 49 

2. The Executive Committee „ o 51 



4 The Model Sunday-school, 

CHAPTER VII. 

Classification and Departments 52-73 

1. Principles of Classification for Scholars and Teachers .... 52 

2. Departments : Primary (55) , Intermediate (62) , Senior (64) , 

Normal (68) , and Home (70) 54 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Superintendent 74-84 

1. His Character and Reputation 74 

2. His Qualifications 75 

3. Out of School 78 

4. In the School 79 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Teacher 85-106 

1. Qualifications 85 

2. Preparation 86 

3. The Teacher Teaching 90 

4. As a Friend 96 

5. In the Discipline of the Sunday-school 98 

6. Training Teachers 101 

7. Hindrances Among Teachers 103 

CHAPTER X. 
The Teachers' Meeting .'"■;.. 107-110 

1. For Devotion 107 

2. For Study 109 

3. For Business . no 

4. For Acquaintance no 

CHAPTER XI. 
Reviews m-115 

1. Of Facts and Teachings in 

2. The Weekly Review 112 

3. The Quarterly Review 113 

4. Written Reviews 114 

CHAPTER XII. 
Sunday-school Music . . e 116-119 

1. The Hymns 116 

2. The Tunes 117 

3. The Spirit of Worship 118 

4. The Chorister . . „ ' 118 



Contents. 5 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Sunday-school Records 120-123 

1. Of the Class 120 

2. Of the Executive Committee 120 

3. Of the School 121 

4. Of the Finances 121 

5. Qualities of a Good Secretary 122 

6. Use of the Records 122 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Sunday-school Literature 124-137 

1. Lesson Helps 124 

2. The Sunday-school Library 128 

3. Other Literature 136 

CHAPTER XV. 
Finances and Charities 138-146 

1. Finances : Of Church and other Schools 138 

2. Charities : The Motives and the Methods 140 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Concerts, Festivals, and Entertainments 147-153 

1. Concerts : Qualities to be Avoided and Sought 147 

2. Festivals : Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Children's Day, and 

the Anniversary 149 

3. Entertainments 152 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Rewards or Recognitions 154-156 

1. For Attendance 155 

2. For Recruiting 155 

3. For Scholarship 156 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Conventions and Institutes 157-159 

1. The Two Discriminated 157 

2. Their Advantages and Themes 158 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Temperance in the Sunday-school „ . . 160-162 

1. In the Teaching e 160 

2. A Plan of Organization 161 

CHAPTER XX. 

Conclusion 163-164 

A Summary, a Counsel, and a Prayer 163 



THE MODEL SUNDAY-SCHOOL 



CHAPTER I. 

Ori^ii? ai?d progress of tlpe Su^day-setyool. 

I. IN ITS ORGANIZATION. 

There can be no doubt that the elements essential to the 
Sunday-school are all to be found in the Old Testament 
Scriptures, that is, there were schools, or classes, therein 
referred to for the study of the Scriptures. Of course they 
did not meet, except incidentally, on the first day of the week, 
and probably not on the Jewish Sabbath. From Abraham to 
Ezra there are distinct traces of this kind of teaching as the 
family church broadens into the national church. Gen. 18 : 19 ; 
Deut. 6:6-9; Neh - 8 : 8 - 

It is clear that, in the first centuries of the Christian 
Church, there were classes for catechumens, that is, for the 
systematic instruction of those who were preparing for full 
admission to the Church, and that these classes were largely 
composed of children and youth. 

It is equally evident that with every period of the 
revival of spiritual life in the Church there has been a 
revival of interest in this department. Luther, Calvin, and 
Knox each insisted on these training schools for the young, 
and the first two prepared catechisms for their use. The 



8 The Model Sunday-school. 

Roman Catholic leaders — Loyola, Xavier, and Borromeo — 
employed similar means to stay the rising tide of Protest- 
antism. 

During the seventeenth century only here and there 
do we come upon the traces of such organizations. In Eng- 
land there seem to be but one or two claimants to this honor. 
In New England, Roxbury, Mass., in 1674, Norwich, Conn., in 
1676, and the original Church of the Pilgrims at Plymouth,, 
Mass., in 1680, show this honorable record. 

The earliest Sunday-school of which any authentic account 
remains was established at Ephratah, Penn. y by Ludwig 
Hacker, in 1 740, and continued until its building was taken for 
military uses during the war of the Revolution. 

It was in July, 1780, in Gloucester, England, that Robert 
Raikes opened a Sunday-school, in the house of a Mrs. King, 
for the neglected children of that neighborhood. It is claimed 
that, in answer to a question, this form of help for them was 
suggested to him by Miss Bradburn, a Methodist lady of that 
city. Mr. Raikes was himself a member of the Church of 
England. The original suggestion seems to have been followed 
that they be taught to read and taken to church. Three other 
women, besides the Mrs. King at whose house they met, were 
engaged to teach, and paid a shilling each Sunday. 

But why does our modern system of Sunday-school organ- 
ization and instruction date back to this rather than to 
other beginnings? Mainly because this special work became 
known through The Gloucester Journal, of which Mr. Raikes 
was the editor and proprietor, though he did not publish the 
methods of his work until he had carried it on successfully for 
three years. The article which then appeared attracted atten- 
tion, induced inquiries, and was republished variously. 

Though opposed by some of its highest dignitaries, his work 
received the approbation of several of the bishops of his own 



Origin and Progress of the Sunday-school, 9 

church. John Wesley caught at the idea and urged it vigor- 
ously upon the Methodist churches. 

Its rapid growth is evidenced by the fact that within 
four years after the public announcement of this work in 
Gloucester the Sunday-schools of Great Britain included 
more than 250,000 members — among all denominations of 
Christians, 

There are now estimated to be about 20,000,000 mem- 
bers enrolled in the Sunday-schools of the world, about one 
half of these being in our own land. 

II. IN ITS SYSTEMS OF STUDY. 

The first of the modern Sunday-schools were devoted 
mainly to teaching otherwise neglected children to read 
and to repeat the catechism of the English Church. Our 
Chinese schools to-day begin where Robert Raikes did, with, 
the English alphabet. 

The next period seems to have been especially devoted to 
memorizing the words of the Bible. Important as this 
is in its place, it by no means is a substitute for understanding 
its truths. It was overdone in its time both in the day and 
Sunday-schools, to the mental and physical injury of many 
children. It is unfortunate that so little of it is attempted or 
accomplished now. 

Catechism study with proof texts has had its day 
also in the Sunday-school. A good catechism may be of great 
value — one which states biblical truths in exact and intelli- 
gible form, one which confines itself to the things which are 
revealed, one which makes not merely a line but a broad 
chasm between the truths which the Holy Spirit has taught 
and the inferences which men have drawn from them. Such 
catechisms are very rare. The great historic catechisms are 



IO The Model Sunday-school. 

not of this sort. Nor were catechisms ever designed to be 
merely committed to the memory without also being com- 
mended to the mind. 

Proof texts are of value also if rightly used ; but not as 
they have been handled, even in recent controversies. It is a 
sacrilegious and degrading use of holy words to use detached 
sentences because they sound like proofs, without regard to 
their real meaning or their connection as they were originally 
spoken or written. The verse study of Scripture is out of 
date, at least in the Sunday-school. 

We are in the day of the paragraph study of the Bible. 
This is a great advance on all that has preceded it, especially 
as it is laid out in the uniform lesson system. This had 
its origin in a general desire to which the International Sunday- 
school Convention, held at Indianapolis in 1872, gave expres- 
sion and form. Since that time the committees appointed at 
this and succeeding conventions have selected the lessons 
and Golden Texts. They have been in use by schools aggre- 
gating probably 8,000,000 in membership. Their plan has 
been to lead the schools in seven years, and later in six years, 
through the main parts of Bible history and doctrine ; select- 
ing as lessons those paragraphs containing its more important 
events and teachings. They have not been able to do more 
than this. They have been obliged to leave the general drill 
on Bible books, history, and geography, and a systematic 
study of doctrines and duties to superintendents, teachers, 
pastors, and normal classes. That a great stimulus has been 
given to the study of the Word of God by this movement 
there can be no question. That it has been adopted by 
the leading denominations of Christians on both sides of 
the ocean is a tribute to the general satisfactoriness of the 
scheme. That it has aroused a sense of further need, of 
deeper and more general knowledge of the Bible, is one of the 



Origin and Progress of the Sunday-school. 1 1 

best tributes to its value. When that superior system is pre- 
pared which will reach more surely than this can the aim and 
purpose of the Sunday-school, it will either take the place of 
the uniform lesson or take a place by its side. What it will be 
the future alone will show. 

All this has led up to a book study of the Bible : to the 
inquiry in each case not mainly as to who wrote the book, but 
from what standpoint, at what time, to whom, and for what 
purpose, it was written. No other line of study can lead to 
such rich, corrected, and suggestive views of the meaning of 
special paragraphs and texts as this. Indeed we do not doubt 
that it is the best method of study or the best atmosphere in 
which to study. It is better than harmonistic or strictly his- 
torical study. These give a good setting for the picture or a 
good catalogue of the gallery. But as the Bible is a collection 
of books and each was written separately and in the main 
without reference to any other, they can be better studied in 
this way. 

The Gospels give us each a special view of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Is it not well to look long and lovingly at these pho- 
tographs, rather than to try to make a better picture of the 
Master by a modern process of composite photography ? Can 
we study the sacred library better than as it was given to us 
through its books? 

III. IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 

The modern Sunday-school was in its origin outside the 
Church, its object to make up somewhat for the lack of other 
training ; its tendency of course was toward the Church. 

As it came to be more and more a school for Bible teaching, 
the Church and its authorities assumed in general a hostile 
attitude. Here and there were marked exceptions to this 



12 The Model Sunday-school, 

rule. The authorized and official teachers of the Church 
feared the effect of this unauthorized and unofficial teaching. 
This was true both in England and in this country. Then 
came a time when it was tolerated, though not much 
more than tolerated, in the Church : when many pastors looked 
upon it with suspicion and granted it a place with apprehen- 
sion. Still it had taken too strong a hold of the mass of the 
people to be refused. Godly men and women saw the oppor- 
tunity to do good and many parents desired it for their children. 
The need was of course most evident where there was no 
such desire. 

The chasm which was allowed to grow up between 
them is due, we think, to this opposition and reluctance 
on the part of the Church to receive the Sunday-school as 
one of its own agencies. If the school had been born within 
the Church and of it ; if from the first it had been recognized 
and treated as its own, there could not have been that 
amount of separateness which exists even to-day between 
them. It would have been a child of the house. The pastor 
would have held his right relation to it. The Church would 
have sustained and controlled it. But as it forced itself upon 
the Church, and was compelled to make its claim good to 
recognition, its adoption has not yet been made complete in 
all bodies of Christian people. 

Now the Sunday-school is recognized and adopted as 
an effective agency of the Church both for the education of 
its ow r n wards and for the extension of its influence to those 
without. All intelligent Christian churches value and use it in 
their work, not as a substitute for parental or pastoral instruc- 
tion, but as a supplement to them ; not to take the place of 
other Home Missionary agencies, but to take its place with 
them as a forerunner, an explorer, a tester of new fields. In 
both these relations its proper work is set forth in other 
chapters. 



Origin and Progress of the Sunday-school. 1 3 

IV. IN ITS ORGANIZATION FOR EVANGELISTIC WORK. 

The Sunday-school first for those without. The 

Sunday-school in its modern life began, not for the Christian 
education of the children of the Church, but altogether with 
reference to those who were growing up outside of its influence. 
In England, indeed, it has continued to work far more on 
this line than in our own land. Since its adoption by the 
Church it has been gradually organizing to renew this work for 
those without. 

Origin of Sunday-school unions. The earliest of 
these organizations was not the outgrowth of any denomination, 
but as the work was largely done, not by the churches as 
a whole, but by individual members of them, these persons 
from various denominations formed unions for its prosecution. 
The two departments of their effort were to furnish books, both 
to guide in Bible study and for libraries of religious reading ; 
and to send out missionaries to organize schools in new or 
religiously neglected places. 

English organizations. A " Sunday-school Society " 
was organized in London in 1785, under which paid teachers 
were employed. When volunteers were substituted for these 
the London Sunday-school Union was organized, in 1803. 
This is a union of Sunday-schools, and not of cooperating 
individuals as in our country. 

American organizations. Sunday-school Unions were 
organized in New York and Boston in 18.16, and in Philadel- 
phia in 181 7. These were for local work. 

The American Sunday-school Union followed in 1824, for 
both the purposes already named. In October of the same 
year the Massachusetts Sabbath-school Union was formed in 
Boston, including delegates from Congregational, Baptist, 
Episcopal, and Methodist Sunday-schools. Only the first two 



14 The Model Sunday-school. 

of these denominations were interested or active members of 
the Union, and they were soon left alone by the withdrawal 
of the other two. In 1832 it was thought best to separate 
amicably with a fair distribution of the property. The Con- 
gregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society 
is the legal and spiritual successor of its part of this work. 
This same work is also vigorously prosecuted by the other 
denominations, the American Sunday-school Union also keep- 
ing up a large and important work. 

Union in sentiment and separation for work* 
The last fifty years are witnesses to two important facts in the 
history of the American churches. The first is that they have 
been growing towards each other in their sympathies, in their 
kindly feelings, in their sense of oneness. The second is that 
they have been withdrawing from each other for the prosecu- 
tion of their aggressive religious work. These two movements 
are by no means contradictory. There is less friction and 
more freedom in the working together of those who are wholly 
at one. There is a greater feeling and assumption of responsi- 
bility in the division of the work. What is yet needed is that 
this sense of oneness shall grow until it leads to a practical 
denominational comity, which will respect the claims of 
previous occupancy ; and which, .on the other hand, will cheer- 
fully give up a field which cannot be efficiently occupied. The 
prayer of Christ for the oneness of his disciples cannot be 
even measurably answered until as much as this is recognized 
in principle and secured in practice. 

Advantages of denominational work. Meanwhile, 
the Union Sunday-school missionary work has its place, espe- 
cially in those sections where there are many church organi- 
zations but no Sunday-schools, or where, from the conditions, 
no church organizations can be formed. In other regions the 
advantages of denominational work are evident and proved 
by experience. They are : — 



Origin and Progress of the Sunday-school. 1 5 

The fostering care that is behind the newly formed school, 
a family into which it may be adopted, and which can care for 
it until it has become a church ; the avoidance of the denomi- 
national question which is so apt to be divisive when the 
question of a church arises, but which is so easily settled at 
the start \ the connection early made with some church or 
pastor who agrees occasionally to visit the school, to preach to 
the people, and to have a general oversight of the work. These 
practical results of greater permanence and peace commend 
the denominational work to all who are familiar with it. 

Methods of Sunday-school missionary work. Its 
methods are simple. On the basis of all attainable informa- 
tion in regard to the place to be visited, its school population^ 
ascertained often from the official records of the county or 
state, it usually begins with a house-to-house canvass. In 
this, while the main inquiry is in regard to the children, other 
facts which concern the religious condition of the family are 
brought to light. A meeting is appointed, at which the ques- 
tion of a Sunday-school organization is discussed. A vote 
is taken ; officers are elected \ helps are given in whole or in 
part ; the school is launched. A preaching service follows of 
an earnest, evangelistic nature ; the few scattered Christians in 
the place, if there are any such, are brought to each other's 
knowledge, and the responsibility for the new Christian enter- 
prise is thrown on them. 

The continued oversight of some church or pastor 
within reaching distance is secured if possible, he agreeing to 
visit this field at stated or irregular intervals. Correspondence 
is kept up with them, as far as possible, by the superintendent 
who has organized them. If the school dies or is suspended, 
the place is revisited, and it is reorganized ; and this constant 
supervision is maintained until at length a church is called for, 
when, under the proper auspices, either the Home Missionary 



1 6 The Model Sunday-school. 

Superintendent or a council of neighboring churches, a church 
is fully organized, of which the Sunday-school out of which it 
has grown remains an important part. 

Instruction in administration and teaching. The 
next work of the Sunday-school missionary is to do all he can 
to make this a good school ; to advise its superintendent as to 
methods of administration, and its teachers as to the best ways 
of teaching. To this end institutes are often held, if possible, 
of groups of neighboring schools, in which they may receive 
such instruction. Evangelistic services are held, where there 
is no church, or where the center of this work is the school. 

Aid, and its limits. Aid is continued in the supply of 
lesson helps and other material to keep up the interest *)f the 
school, it being encouraged to assume self-support as rapidly 
as it may be able. In fact, everything is done which can be to 
foster the religious life of the community, and to make the 
work begun both organically permanent and spiritually fruitful. 

With the variations implied in the conditions, this is the 
general working plan in city and in country — a canvass, an 
organization, pastoral oversight, instruction and advice, and aid 
diminishing until self-support is possible and actual. 



CHAPTER II. 

5l?e Supday-setyool Defied : its fi\(i\ apd its 
Orders. 

I. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL DEFINED. 

What is the Sunday-school? It is an organization 
which meets regularly on the Lord's Day for the social study 
of God's Word. 

It is on the Lord's Day because (i) there is leisure on 
that day for such a gathering; (2) because the study of the 
Bible is an appropriate use of holy time. 

It studies God's Word because the truth contained 
therein is able to make us wise unto salvation; to fit us to 
live wisely here and to save us from sin and death. 

Its teaching is distinguished from that of the pulpit in 
that it is by question and answer; that it is conversational 
rather than oratorical ; that it is flexible as directed to topics 
which may prove to be of special value by the interest ex- 
cited ; and that it is guided by the text of the Scripture rather 
than by selected topics. 

Its main work is teaching : on this it is to depend for 
the accomplishment of its purpose. Its leading work is not 
exhortation : that belongs rather to the more general service 
or to private conversation. Exhortation soon wears out and 
loses its power by too frequent repetition. The Sunday-school 
is not chiefly for the personal application of the lesson to the 
class or to the individual pupils. Its work is the study of the 
Bible as a whole and in its parts, its history, its doctrines, and 



1 8 The Model Sunday-school. 

its duties. The Bible well taught may be trusted largely to 
make its own impression and application. 

It is not a substitute for the religious instruction of the 
home. God has said to every father and mother, "Take 
this child and nurse it for me and I will give thee thy wages,' * 
No individual or institution can relieve the parent of this 
responsibility and privilege. The Sunday-school may, however, 
help the parent in this work. 

It is not a substitute for the other services of the 
church. It differs from them in its methods and means, while 
it works to the same end. It is incomplete without them, as 
they are without it. It may and ought to help them all. 

II. ITS AIM 

is to lead all who are engaged in it to an intelligent Christian 
faith and life. Nothing less than this would be a sufficient 
reason for giving to it a part of the Lord's Day. Nothing 
less than this consists with the purpose for which the Bible was 
given to and has been preserved in the world. What is its aim? 

(i) Not mere entertainment. That is the lowest pos- 
sible thought that can be connected with this work. To make 
the hour pass pleasantly is as insufficient a motive as to make 
the teacher or superintendent popular is an unworthy one. 
While both of these are important and desirable to be attained, 
in the Sunday-school as in the public worship of the church, 
it is merely as aids to the only worthy purpose for which the 
school or public worship is held. 

(2) It is by no means a mere knowledge of the Bible 
either in its general character, its history, the relation of its 
different parts, or even an intellectual apprehension of its 
doctrines or the character of the Divine Man who is its 
central and commanding figure. The Bible was given for a 



The Sunday-school Defined, 19 

purpose and it is that which has been named as the object of 
its study. It is not a mere history, though it is that ; but it is 
the history of the revelation of God to us that he might be 
the object of our faith and love and obedience. Mere knowl- 
edge has no saving power. It must stir the heart and move 
the will or it only adds a burden of responsibility and an 
emphasis of condemnation. 

(3) It is not simply conversion which should be its 
aim : but more than that. Conversion is only the beginning 
or rather the preliminary to a Christian life. It is the turning 
from sin to serve the living and true God. The life and the 
service are beyond it. It is the vessel casting off from the 
dock where it has been lying ; but the voyage is before it, 
the use of chart, compass, and rudder must be mastered, with 
a daily taking of the sun besides. 

III. WHOM SHOULD IT INCLUDE? 

All who desire or are willing to study and learn more 
of God's Word. This naturally includes all the children and 
youth. They are learning in all departments, and ought to 
desire and certainly need to be instructed in the Bible. It 
should include all who have not enjoyed or improved these 
advantages in their childhood and youth, and who therefore 
need to make up for that deficiency. It should include all who 
are not sure that they know all that it is important or possible 
for them to know of the Book which contains the revelation of 
our heavenly Father's character and will and purposes for us. 

Not only the pupils should be in the Sunday-school for this 
purpose, but the officers and teachers as well. They too are 
there not only to teach but to learn. And there is no incen- 
tive to learn like learning to teach. There is no study which 
is so fruitful as that which is done with this motive. 



20 The Model Sunday-school. 

It should include parents who have a motive in addition 
to their own needs in their preparation to minister to the 
needs of their children and to aid them in their study of 
the Bible. 

It should certainly not omit the earnest pastor who will wish 
to be in the study with the rest for his own sake and that he 
may help to guide the study of all in the best direction. 

Who are left out then ? None who are able to and can be 
persuaded to come, or to join the study at home. 

IV. VARIOUS ORDERS OF SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 

There are several kinds of schools, some of which are more 
complete than others. Some are permanent and some tem- 
porary in their forms. 

i. The Church Sunday-school. This is the ideal 
school. Where there is an organized Christian church, this 
is the only form in which it ought to exist. The school is one 
of the forms of organized activity of the local church. This 
will be the idea in mind in the general counsels which occupy 
this book. The modifications necessary to apply them to the 
temporary forms of its existence will be generally obvious, and 
only occasionally expressed. 

2. The mission or branch school. This is naturally 
the outreaching of the church to those who are too far away 
to attend the church school. It ought not to be a reaching 
down to a different class of those poorer in wealth or intelli- 
gence and who are therefore separated from the families who 
make up the home congregation. They ought to be welcomed 
to all that the church provides for its own, even if it must 
provide a little less for them in some regards. The church is 
all a mission, not a club, and it will best provide for its own by 
imbuing them all with the spirit of the Master. But there 



Tlie Sunday-school Defined. 21 

are those too far away to come ; to them it goes with the same 
advantages it offers to its own. 

The distinction stated. The mission school may be 
more or less connected with the church. If the church as- 
sumes to supply a place for its sessions, money for its expenses, 
and teachers and officers for its work, it is essentially a part of 
the church — a branch. 

If it is taken care of in these regards by individual members 
of the church, then it is a mission, or independent school, 
having only the moral support of the church and its pastor. 
The closer it can be tied to the home church the better, during 
the period of its dependency ; but the sooner it can be sup- 
plemented with other services of public worship, preaching, and 
prayer-meetings, the better ; and the sooner it can be graduated 
as a fully organized and independent church the best of all. 
Then, what was the branch or mission school will have be- 
come a church school in the full and ideal sense. 

3. The pioneer school. In the newer parts of the 
country where religious institutions have not been organized, 
and in the newer parts of growing cities, the easiest way to 
begin Christian effort is with the Sunday- school. A simple 
organization may be effected, a superintendent and teachers 
selected as carefully as possible, and the aid, as may be abso- 
lutely necessary, given. To insure the permanence of such 
beginnings is more difficult than to begin them. A patient 
oversight is necessary. The best way is to place the school 
in relation to some particular branch of the Church of Christ, 
so that it shall be cared for, and above all so that it shall 
be developed in time into a church fully organized. It is 
important to hold the ground, but it is not sufficient in 
itself. 

4. The union school: where needed. The place for 
this is where nothing else will grow ; where the people refuse 



22 The Model Sunday-school. 

to gather under the name or care of any organized denomina- 
tion ; where there are temporary populations and no church 
can be planted and prosper. Here the people may unite to 
study the Bible and to pray and praise and to hear such 
preaching as they can secure. 

Why seldom needed. There are few new communities, 
however, where it is not possible to organize a Sunday-school 
under the care of a particular branch of the Church, provided 
it is one which has no prominent and divisive peculiarities, and 
that the work is begun in a kindly and Christian spirit : and 
where if this body commends itself by its liberality and 
catholicity, there will not probably grow up a church of the 
corresponding order. It is an easy matter, and is often done, 
to turn such a school over to the care of another denomination 
if it shall be able to come to church organization first. " The 
best union school is a denominational school " has been often 
said by those at the front. 

What it lacks. The difficulties of the union school 
are the lack of responsible supervision, the lack of connection 
with any organized church, the division which arises often with 
the question of organizing a church, and the fact that a much 
larger proportion of such schools fail to result in churches than 
of those planted and cared for by a denomination. 

When injurious. A union school which hinders the 
organization of a church is an injury. A school which insists 
on remaining union after the organization of a church is an 
injury and limits the usefulness of the church and its minister. 

There is no reason for the existence of a union Sunday- 
school which does not apply to a union church, and that we 
know usually means only a new denomination. 

The church school, the ideal. Let everything move, 
then, toward the church school. The branch is really part of 
the vine, the Church. The mission ought to be grafted on as 



The Sunday-school Defined. 23 

quickly as may be practicable. The independent and the 
pioneer and union schools should either come under the care 
of some neighboring church and pastor, or be developed into 
churches, meanwhile, as a temporary expedient, having the 
care of a general missionary of some organized denomination. 



CHAPTER III. 

5I?<? Supday-setyool apd tl?<? J-lom?. 

Parents the first teachers. The home is the earliest 
and the divinest of all institutions. Every child is put into the 
care of a father and a mother, or is intended to be, and the 
divine plan is that by them as models and as teachers of all 
that is good, the child shall grow up into the likeness of Jesus 
Christ. When the home and the church are working together 
toward this end there is great hope of its accomplishment. 
But the church has the child in its training-school for only one 
hour a week ; the secular school has it for twenty-five hours, 
and the home all the remainder of the time. If the church 
through the pastor, the superintendent, the teacher, all com- 
bined, can secure the hearty, open, evident cooperation of the 
home, the strongest ally is gained. 

I. HOW THE HOME CAN HELP THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

(i) By securing prompt and regular attendance* 

If the parents are in the school themselves, it is best accom- 
plished by saying, " Come, ,, in addition to their own prompt- 
ness and regularity. If they are not attendants, it can be 
accomplished by seeing that the children, and even the young 
folks, are ready in ample time, and then by saying, " Go." Get 
this into the minds of the parents as important, and it will be 
done. 



The Sunday-school and the Home. 2$ 

(2) By securing good will toward teachers. By 

helping the children to regard their teachers with respect and 
good will, If parents criticize pastors or teachers before their 
young people, they invite them to do the same. The way in 
which teachers are greeted by their pupils is almost a sure indi- 
cation of the way in which they are spoken of in the home. It 
is too bad by careless criticism to undermine the influence of 
those who are seeking the children's good. If their faults are 
serious, the children should be taken away from their care. If 
not, these should never once be named. 

(3) By aiding the children, and stimulating them 
in the study of the lesson. If the father and mother 
never speak of the Bible studies of their children, it is to be 
assumed that they do not think them of much consequence. 
If these are kept in mind, some questions asked now and then 
about them, reference made to them occasionally at family 
prayers and at other times, the inference is that they are 
regarded as of importance. There are endless ways by which 
to make this impression ; the main thing is for the parents to 
have this feeling. In some households a verse or two is studied 
every day ; in others, the daily Bible readings used are those in 
connection with the lessons ; in many the lesson is gone over 
with the younger children at least before they go to the class ; 
or the Golden Texts or memory verses are recited at home, and 
it is seen that they are thoroughly learned. In any or all of 
these ways the parents can show their interest in the Sunday- 
school work, and can secure what it is almost impossible for 
the teacher to do without their aid, the study of the lesson at 
home. 

(4) By encouraging the teachers and aiding those 
who are trying to help the children of the home. Superintend- 
ents and teachers need this help. To know that parents at 
home are praying for them in their work ; to be assured of 



26 The Model Sunday-school. 

their cooperation in all the ways that have been named ; to 
receive an occasional word of sympathy and gratitude for their 
unpaid labors, — this puts heart into them when discouraged, 
and prevents them from becoming weary in their welldoing. 
Let parents do or say something now and then to show their 
appreciation and to prove their cooperation. The best way is 
to attend and help ; if that is impossible, the next best thing 
is to go occasionally, and at . least say, Thank you and God 
bless you ! 

If anything special is proposed against which the parent has 
no conscientious objection, let him heartily cooperate through 
the children. Is it a special or a regular missionary collection ? 
See that you do your part through your children. Is it a 
thanksgiving bag to fill for some poor family or institution? 
Help your children to fill it full and to carry it, proud that it is 
so heavy, to add to the common stock. Is it for some need of 
the school to be supplied by common effort? Help in the same 
way all you can. Don't be forever holding back from the 
common movement of the school ; pull rather, even if you 
think something else would be better. 

(5) By having the same aim for which the Sunday- 
school exists : that is, the development of an intelligent 
Christian faith and life. That is the highest function of the 
home which is the only true aim of the church. There was a 
time when church and family were one, and Abraham was 
called " to the end that he may command his children and his 
household after him, that they may keep the way of the 
Lord " (Gen. r8 : 19). It was thus that all the families of the 
earth should be blessed in him. When the first desire of the 
parents' hearts for their children and households is that each 
may come into the Christly life, the work of the Sunday-school 
will be easy and its greatest present hindrance will be taken 
out of the way. 



The Sunday-school and the Home. 27 



II. HOW TO SECURE THE CO-OPERATION OF THE 

HOME. 

This is not always ready. All the homes from which schol- 
ars come are not Christian homes. Parents are often indiffer- 
ent and more often unqualified to give much aid. But the 
wise superintendent and teacher can awaken interest and give 
wise direction to it. 

We can give only a few hints. Take the parents into 
your confidence. Tell them what you are trying to do for 
their children. Talk to them freely of the good qualities you 
recognize in your scholars, and hint gently at the difficulties you 
find in securing their attendance or attention. Suggest some 
simple ways in which they may be aided at home. Show your 
own real interest in them, and theirs will follow and respond to 
yours. Enter into sympathy with them and their home life 
with simple friendliness, and when they trust you as a friend 
they will try to help you as a teacher. 



III. HOW THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. MAY HELP THE 

HOME. 

(1) As a stimulus to parental faithfulness. What Chris- 
tian parent can bear to see another more interested in his own 
child's religious life and training than he is himself ? 

(2) By wise counsel and advice. Often the teacher may 
be called upon for these by inexperienced parents or those just 
waking to the higher responsibilities of their position. 

(3) By teaching the children their duties to parents 
and home as laid down in the Bible and illustrated in the early 
life of Jesus. 

(4) By binding the godless home to the church 
through kindness and faithfulness and patience. 



28 The Model Sunday-school. 

(5) By leading the children and youth into the 
kingdom, and so bringing the kingdom near to the home. 

Relation of the Sunday-school to Home Training. 

It has been made as an objection to the working of the Sun- 
day-school that it is too often allowed to take the place of 
family religious training. We doubt the fact, except perhaps 
in irreligious homes, where if there were nothing else the 
parents might feel compelled to give the children some formal 
teaching in committing to memory the commandments or the 
catechism. The excuse might be made in such cases that 
their children receive all needed Christian teaching in the 
Sunday-school. Who will question that in these cases the 
substitute is better than that which it displaces ? The loving, 
interested instruction of a Christian teacher is far better than 
the mere rote teaching of an indifferent parent. 

In truly Christian homes the Sunday-school doubtless 
changes the character of the home teaching. It is not neces- 
sary for the parent to spend as much time as otherwise over the 
same things that are taught in the school. But this only leaves 
the way open for a deeper and a wider range of teaching, 
either in giving that general knowledge of the Bible which is 
so much needed, or in leading into its more spiritual lessons. 
There is a wide enough range which is not covered by the 
Sunday-school instruction for all the time and thought which 
most Christian parents can command. 

Then, too, as to the fact. It is no more true than " that 
the public school system hinders home instruction." Rev. 
Henry Clay Trumbull, in his Yale Lectures (p. 151), asserts 
as the result of his careful study that " all history gives evidence 
that just in proportion as the church school in earlier or later 
times has flourished or has declined, family religion has waxed 
or has waned," and from his wide observation testifies : " In- 



The Sunday-school and the Home. 29 

variably I have found that the measure and standard of family 
religion corresponded with the measure and standard of Sun- 
day-school activities in each and every community." * 

The fact is, the Sunday-school stimulates, guides, and supple- 
ments the training of the home and connects its life with that 
of the church. 

The Home Department offers efficient aid in the direction 
of keeping the Sunday-school and the home together in work 
and influence. (See the section which treats of that Depart- 
ment.) 

1 Yale Lectures on the Sunday-school, Trumbull, p. 173. 



CHAPTER IV. 

5I?<? Supday-setyool apd tl?e Qfyurel?. 

A better title. It would be better to say, " the Sunday- 
school in the Church/' but the words would be misunderstood. 
The topic should not be stated, " The relation of the Sunday- 
school to the church " ; that implies that they are two and not 
one. The Sunday-school is the church, and those in it are 
under its care engaged in the study of God's Word. Of course 
what will be said applies mainly to a Sunday-school which is or 
can be connected with a particular church. They are or 
should be as much one as the church and the prayer-meeting, 
or the church and the church committee. 



I. WHAT THE CHURCH SHOULD DO FOR THE 
SUNDAY-SCHOOL.. 

The fundamental principle is that the church should in every 
respect regard and treat the school as an essential part of itself, 
for it is that part of it in which the Bible is studied and taught 
in a social way. 

i. The church should control the Sunday-schooL 
It so controls the committee and the prayer-meeting. 

It should organize the school ; for the school must of neces- 
sity have an organization. It must have officers and meetings 
and appliances for its peculiar service. There are good and 
bad ways in which this may be done. It would not be helpful 
for the church to vote on and decide all the smaller matters of 

3° 



The Sunday-school and the Church. 3 1 

the schooPs management. The best connection is in the ap- 
pointment of the superintendent, as that officer to whom the 
church entrusts the administration of the school. The teachers 
with the pastor and the voting members of the school may 
wisely be consulted on the ground of their especial interest 
and their more intimate knowledge. These teachers will 
usually be the faithful members of the church who attend its 
social and business meetings, and do the voting there. Let 
them nominate to the church, but let the church as such elect 
the head of the school. 

But, let the church elect the superintendent, not 
merely as an officer of the school, but of the church. Make 
him ex officio a member of the church committee, one of the 
pastor's staff officers. Thus he can easily consult with the 
committee in regard to the needs and interests of the school, 
can help to unify its concerns with those of the church, and 
can be one of those to whom its members make application 
for admission to church membership. Then he will make 
report of his stewardship at the annual meeting of the church, 
not as a matter of courtesy, but as an officer making his return 
to those from whom he received his trust. 

2. The church should support the Sunday-school. 
A common purse is the symbol of a common interest. It is a 
contradiction for the church to claim the school as part of 
itself, and compel or call on it to support itself. 

(a) It should supply the place for the school ; the best 
place it can. It may only be able to offer the room in which 
its services of public worship are held. If that is the best it 
can afford, it may be made to answer the purpose. There are 
thousands of one-room cabins in the land where a whole family 
lives. It is not well, if more rooms can be had ; but you can- 
not blame the parents who share the best they can afford with 
their children. The advantage of separate rooms may, to some 



32 The Model Sunday-school. 

extent, be gained by the simple expedient of screens, 

cheaply framed of wood and covered with cloth on both sides, 
and hooked on to screw-eyes attached to seats and walls where 
they may be needed. This will separate as far as the eyes are 
concerned, and help somewhat in limiting the reach of the 
voice. Thousands of Sunday-schools, however, have done 
excellent study and come to grand spiritual results without even 
as much as this. 

It may be the prayer-meeting room, That will do if it is 
large enough to contain the school ; only, in either case, the 
room should be adapted for the teaching service, as well as for 
the preaching or the praying service. For all uses, it should 
be adapted to the three great needs of the eye, the ear, and 
the lungs. It should be possible in it to see, to hear, and to 
breathe. Too many rooms only afford a place to sit, and that 
at great disadvantage. A room for the Sunday-school service 
should be light enough to read anywhere within its walls on a 
fair day, and it should have some other means of ventilation 
than the windows if possible. One or two flues heated with a 
coil of steam pipe, a gas jet, or a lamp, will greatly relieve the 
close and foul air in almost any room. 

If possible the church should provide not a room, but 
rooms for the school. The primary department always needs 
a separate place. It need not be connected with the main 
school at all. The Bible and normal classes need separate 
rooms, and every class which can be thus isolated during the 
teaching half hour should have that advantage. As many of 
these rooms as possible should open into the main room, and 
be arranged so that every person can see and be seen by the 
superintendent as he stands at his desk. 

There are several such model Sunday-school rooms in 
the land. The latest, largest, and probably the best of all, is 
that connected with the Tompkins Avenue Church of Brooklyn, 



The Sunday-school and the Church. 



33 



New York, of which Dr. Robert R. Meredith is pastor. The 
following description is by the architect : — 

"The parish house has a frontage of about no feet on 
McDonough Street, and, as shown by the plans, is admirably 
adapted for its purposes. 

"The Sunday-school hall is on the upper floor, and is 
reached by four wide stairways. Ordinarily one will be used 
by the school, and this leads past the library, where the books 
can be taken out or exchanged before entering the main room. 




THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL ROOMS OF TOMPKINS AVENUE CHURCH. 



The hall itself is compactly arranged and adapted for skilled 
and successful labor ; it has a gallery running all round upstairs. 
The superintendent's desk is on a platform on the west side of 
the room, and is so placed that every one in the room can see 
the leader. In the main room there is space for about seventy 
classes of the intermediate grade. To the left of the platform 
is the primary department, where 250 pupils can be taught, and 



34 T-ke Model Sunday-school. 

above them, in the gallery, is the juvenile division, arranged for 
thirty-four classes of at least ten scholars each. To the right 
of the platform and in front, both upstairs and down, are class- 
rooms, twenty-two in all, fourteen of which will seat sixteen 
scholars each, the eight larger ones seating from twenty to 
forty persons. There is also a large room, which it is expected 
to use in the future for a Young Men's Bible class, with room 
for about 300. This will be used at present for teachers' and 
other meetings. All these rooms are shut off from the main 
room by sliding doors during the teaching. Over the superin- 
tendent's desk is a gallery for visitors. Where blackboards are 
needed in the separate rooms, they are fixed in the sliding 
doors. There is a large dome in the center of the ceiling, 
which furnishes the light for the main room, and the separate 
rooms are all supplied with gas-burners. The building is 
ventilated by a fan run by a motor, which supplies fresh air, 
while outlets are provided for vitiated air. The coloring of the 
walls and the general appearance of the room are most pleas- 
ing. But here, as everywhere, one perceives at once the sub- 
jection of everything to the purposes for which the building 
is erected." 

(b) The church should supply money for the expenses 
of the school. If this is regarded as an essential part of 
the church, is there any reason why its expenses should not 
be counted into the annual budget, and provided for in the 
same way in which the other church expenses are met? A 
very small proportion of our churches do this, even where the 
means are abundant and the general unity is recognized. 

Let the church estimate and appropriate so many dollars a 
week or a quarter or a year for the school — enough, if it has 
the means, to furnish it liberally with all the needed appliances 
for its work : enough, at any rate, to provide what is essential 
for its efficiency. 



The Sunday-school and the Church. 3 5 

How this can be done in a poor church. A church 
school should never be asked or allowed to raise the money 
for its own expenses. If it is able to do it easily, it should not 
be allowed to be independent of the church. If only able to 
do it by much effort, it should never be put to that strain. 
But what if the church is poor and weak and unable to sup- 
port the school and allow it to expend the money which it 
raises on missionary objects? Then, I answer, do as parents 
do who are in the same condition. Let the children and 
adults who compose the Sunday-school raise and earn what 
they can and bring it back to the common fund, the treasury 
of the church, and then let the church pay for its necessary 
supplies. Does some one say, ' ; But the church would use it 
for other purposes and leave the school to suffer"? Well, if 
the children cannot trust the parents, it 's a hard case. The 
parents would better be put to school to the children. 

(c) The church should supply the school with teach- 
ers. As in the matter of the place and the finances this 
should be with the best it can give. It has no better use for 
its best men and women than this, to teach the young, and the 
older ones too, to come in closest contact with them and so 
to stimulate them that they may come up to the level of its 
best intelligence and follow its best examples. 

To this end let the church magnify the office of the teacher, 
let it exalt his privilege and his responsibility, let it pray in its 
services of public and of social worship for those thus engaged. 
Let it arrange for the training of teachers : well-pre- 
pared teachers will not spring up spontaneously ; those most 
willing and by nature most apt to teach need to be drilled in 
the subject matter which they are to make clear to others : 
those most intelligent in this regard often need just as much 
to be taught how to impart the knowledge which they possess. 

Do not let the church urge anybody to teach without regard 



36 The Model Sunday-school. 

to fitness or without adopting some methods for preparing 
them. Let its best and brightest and most devoted young 
men and women be selected, trained, and consecrated to this 
important work and this exalted privilege. 

(d) The church should supply the school with a warm 
atmosphere of sympathy and appreciation. It should 
not, as is too often the case, leave the school outside of its 
plans and thoughts: it should brood over it, and treat it as 
one of its most important departments. It need not pet it, 
nor treat it as a spoiled child whose demands must be met, 
but as a son of the house who has a right to a share in all that 
it contains as its prospective heir and head. 

3. The church should use the Sunday-school. 
# {a) For instruction. Somewhere within every church and 
equally in every community there needs to be a training school 
for the young, and indeed for all who are not fully educated in 
religious things. Leaving the fullest place for parental and pas- 
toral training, there needs a more general organization for this 
service. Indeed if this general foundation of Christian knowl- 
edge is laid by such an agency the way is made clear for the 
more particular training of both parent and pastor. It has 
been already indicated how this may take its place among the 
recognized agencies of the church. But its mere recognition 
in the organization is of less importance than its recognition in 
the use. 

The church should be in the school. Not all as teach- 
ers by any means, but all, save those prevented by inabilities 
or disabilities, by sickness or by other duties, as students to- 
gether of the Word of God. The idea of a well adult not 
being in the Sunday-school because he does not teach shows 
an altogether false idea of it. It ought not to be merely a 
children's school, but a gathering of all who have yet anything 
more to learn about God's Word that they may learn it ; and 



The Sunday-school and the Church. 37 

if there is any one who has no more to learn, he should cer- 
tainly be there to teach. 

There should be a place for all : teachers, if possible, for 
all ; adult classes without teachers, if need be, where all may 
ask and answer. The invitation should be given to all. Some 
of the most perplexing questions would be answered forever in 
a school thus composed. The boys would not outgrow it at 
sixteen, but would grow in it to manhood and old age. There 
would be no graduating exercises or process, but a constant 
ascent toward the heights of Christian knowledge. It would in 
many places come to take the place of one of the preaching 
services, and then the pastor could use it as often his most 
effective service of the day. 

A model Sunday. What could make a better division of 
the Lord's Day than — 1. A service of preaching ; 2. A service 
of Bible study ; 3. A service of testimony and conference ; all 
these of course being services of worship ? 

(b) For development of power. The church needs to 
find helpful service for every member of it ; something for 
each one to do which is done for an important end, and 
which, by the way, tests abilities and develops strength. The 
devotional exercises of the prayer-meeting, and the secular 
duties connected with the society, and the social duties arising 
from its relations, are not sufficient for this purpose. The Sun- 
day-school is of all the best spiritual gymnasium of the church 
as well as its best school for instruction. There are room and 
place for many 10 work there as well as to be fed. Watch those 
who give promise of faculty for teaching or for other service ; 
test them by using them as substitutes ; train them by normal 
classes or by putting them under the best teachers, or working 
them with efficient officers ; and then lay hands on them, not 
suddenly, but after this due deliberation, and set them apart 
for the service which they can render best. 



38 The Model Sunday-school. 

Mission work. If there is not room in your own church 
school, look around and find the place where you can establish 
a mission school, and put your new and prepared material into 
it with a mingling of your tried home workers. You will thus 
put fresh life into both. A Sunday-school planted by mission- 
ary effort in a frontier town often has saved the Christian lives 
and characters of those on whom the responsibility of main- 
taining it has been laid. He that works, eats and digests his 
food. He who studies in order to teach learns fastest and 
most thoroughly of all. 

(V) For evangelization. That means the proclamation 
and offer of the gospel to those outside the church. The Sun- 
day-school is the easiest of all means for reaching the house- 
holds which do not belong to the church or even help to swell 
the congregation. It may be made the connecting link with 
scores of Christless homes in every village, with hundreds in 
every town, with thousands in every city. It is a power which 
has been largely used and yet has more largely been neglected. 

When a new family comes into a community the children 
want to go to Sunday-school, and often the parents wish to 
have them go, either to be rid of the care of them for an hour, 
or because they know that their children need to learn what 
they cannot teach them. Let the church follow the child back 
to the home. The teacher, the superintendent, the visiting com- 
mittee, the deacons, the pastor — let them all know about this 
new household in their midst; let them be sure that the 
invitation is promptly given to the parents to come with their 
children to the house of God (a delay of a month may serve 
to fix their habits in the home) ; let them show kindness, not 
officiously, not. ostentatiously, but in the real spirit of friendly 
helpfulness, and the problem of reaching the masses is more 
nearly solved than by any other answer. So the church may 
spread its influence through the community and some gleam 



The Sunday-school and the Church. 39 

of its light shine into many darkened homes. Let the church 
use the Sunday-school if it would appreciate its power. 

The church is responsible not merely for the training 
of its own youth and children, but especially for that of those 
who have no such help at home ; and this all the more as our 
public schools are compelled to drop all religious instruction. 



II. WHAT THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL SHOULD DO FOR 
THE CHURCH. 

Of course its duties are largely reciprocal and complemen- 
tary to those of the church, as the duties of children are to 
those of parents. 

The school should recognize its place in the church and 
accept its supervision, its support, and its service. It should 
never resent the fact that it is not the whole or the head. Its 
superintendent should never forget that he is an officer of the 
church, and that in the church office is a place of service 
rather than of authority. To him is committed indeed a larger 
administrative trust than to any other officer of the church, 
but he is therefore only the more to hold himself responsible 
for his faithful discharge of its duties. The teachers should 
hold their places individually and together in the same spirit 
of loyalty to the whole body of which they are only one part. 
There should be always the fullest consultation and coopera- 
tion, and no plans should be adopted which can conflict in 
any way with other interests of the church. Indeed, if the 
organization and spirit be such as has been already suggested, 
there can be nothing but harmony. 

As an expression of this unity and dependence : — 

1. The school should report to the church. This 
should be fully and formally done at the annual church meet- 
ing, where the superintendent is to be elected. If this is not 



40 The Model Sunday-school. 

-^ 

already the practice, as there may be delicacy in one outside 
the school suggesting it, it would be well for the officers and 
teachers of the school to invite the church to assume this 
relation and elect the superintendent or confirm their election, 
already conditionally made. 

2. The school should contribute to the church if its 
aid be needed. I have already said that the church should 
support the school, and I adhere to that proposition in all 
cases. But the church may not be able to provide for both 
the preaching and the teaching services. If the parents can- 
not furnish the table for both themselves and their children, 
would you have them separate their interests and say, " We 
will provide for ourselves ; do you go and earn or beg your 
food"? No; not even if they begged it for their parents. 
They would say, " Children, you must help us provide for us 
all. We will do all we can, and you must add your earnings, 
and together we will have enough to go around. At any rate 
we will work and eat together." So I say, let the school con- 
tribute to the church, and then out of the common fund let 
the church provide for the school as well as for the pulpit. It 
might be well for every Sunday-school to make some contri- 
bution to the church in recognition of its care and love ; just 
as it is well for every son and daughter to do some service in 
the home. 

3. The school should send its charities through the 
church. This is a suggestion which may seem to some ex- 
treme and unnecessary, and which only in a very few instances 
is done. But look at it a moment. Here is a church or 
congregation composed of families, men, women, and children. 
What are the facts as relates to the giving to Christian objects 
of these families and those who compose them? At the 
annual meeting of the church (either as it was held until 
within a few years, or since the writer devised the plan of 



The Sunday-school and the Church. 41 

making this the grand yearly festival of the church with reports 
from all its organizations and activities), the charities of the 
church are reported. They include the contributions taken 
at the service of public worship, at the monthly concerts, or 
by a system of weekly offerings, or by all these combined. 
This is all that is accounted as the giving of the church. But 
gather up all the giving of the Sunday-school, the various 
missionary and other organizations, women's and children's 
mainly, and you add, in many cases, two thirds, and sometimes 
more than that, to the contributions of the church, which 
are not the charities of the church in reality, but only of the 
men. Why there should be this distinction it is hard to 
say. Why there should not it is easy to prove. The church 
should be the center in each community of its Christian life, 
and I hold that all these various organizations should pass their 
offerings through the church treasury, taking the church treas- 
urer's receipt, and have them passed over as the contributions 
of the Women's Auxiliary or Home Circle or Christian En- 
deavor Society or Sunday-school of the particular church 
of which they are a part. That would be a practical and 
efficient way of recognizing the unity of the church and would 
do something to counteract the centrifugal tendency of the 
times. 

4. It should secure a more regular and general 
attendance on the other services of the church. 

The services of public and social worship should be an- 
nounced in the sessions of the Sunday-school. Officers and 
teachers should know which of the scholars do, and which do 
not, attend these services, and should do all in their power 
to encourage them all to be there. Invite them to sit with 
you, or sit with them at first, or see that they have a regular 
place to occupy ; keep a record of their attendance ; ask them 
for the text ; give them a sermon record book ; speak well of 



42 The Model Sunday-school. 

the pastor, and tell or question about the sermons ; get your 
pastor to remember them in his prayers and preaching always, 
and occasionally to have a service adapted especially to them. 
Keep it in your mind and in theirs. 

5. It should add to the membership of the church. 
As it is intended to lead to, and in, the Christian life, this matter 
of confessed discipleship should be made prominent as a test 
and expression of the accomplishment of this purpose. In- 
deed, as a fact, the Sunday-school comprises the class from 
which the church secures a large proportion of its accessions. 
But this is not enough : it should be so as the result of its 
definite aim and work. To this its plans, its prayers, its 
teaching should tend : to exalt the church as the body of 
Christ and membership in it as the distinctive mark of disci- 
pleship. With this in the thought of all who give form and 
character to the Sunday-school, it will be still more marked 
as a preparatory school for entrance to the church, as well 
as for training in it. 



CHAPTER V. 

Jtye Supday-setyool apd tl?e pastor. 

It is of prime importance that the pastor should have a 
definite place in the Sunday-school and a definite relation 
to its work. As the leader of the church in its spiritual life, 
he cannot disregard this part of it any more than the preach- 
ing service or the prayer-meeting. As teacher as well as pas- 
tor, he should be felt in this, the teaching service of the 
church. He does not need any official relation to it except 
as it is involved in his pastoral office. As pastor he should 
look after the lambs and the young sheep ; as teacher, he 
should care for the pupils. It is not often necessary or de- 
sirable that he should administer all the details of the school 
or class management ; and yet he should be familiar with 
them and a constant adviser. His relation with the superin- 
tendent should be intimate and paternal. He should be re- 
garded as, and should be in fact, the pastor of the school, 
and should be always so announced and published. 

What should be his special relation and how should this 
relation be expressed ? 

I. IN THE SCHOOL. 

He should be there. This is the best and easiest way 
of showing his interest. If possible, his other appointments 
should be so arranged that he can attend. Certainly his work 
of preparation for later services in the day should not be 
postponed so as to prevent him. 

43 



44 The Model Sunday-school. 

He will be more likely to attend with regularity if he is 
expected to take some part in the opening and closing 
services of the school. If the superintendent allows him to 
sit by his side without recognition or a claim for assistance, 
he will naturally come to the conclusion that his presence is 
of no importance. He ought to be free to say what part 
he will take and should not need to be invited or permitted. 
He should often lead in the prayer, sometimes in the reading ; 
sometimes, if not always, he should show the connection of 
the lesson with that for the preceding Sunday, and should, 
if he have the gift, sum up the practical lessons of the hour's 
study with a brief review or address. He can do some of 
his best and most effective preaching in this way and at this 
time. 

Should he teach a class ? Not unless the necessity 
be very great. He belongs on Sunday to the whole church 
and the whole school. No half dozen or score of members 
should monopolize his strength and time. He should always 
study to do the most good to the greatest number. Least 
of all should he, as is so often done, devote himself to an adult 
class of church members who need him least of all. If he 
must take a class, let it be a class for training teachers or 
a class of young men who will not come unless they are taught 
by a man of intelligence and force. 

He may in general more easily, if he teaches, do so as a 
substitute, now in this class and now in that : so he can 
become acquainted with his young people better than in most 
ways. He may be able to drop into the separate classes, and, 
without interrupting, aid the teachers here and there in un- 
folding the truth, may answer the hard questions which con- 
tinually arise, and so come to know the work of the teachers, 
as well as the wants of the pupils. Whatever he does should 
be done with reference to the service and advantage of the 



Tlie Sunday-school and the Pastor. 45 

greatest possible number. He should not use up strength 
on a few which belongs to the whole. 

One reason why all good ministers do not do this 
service in all these ways is because the church does not wish 
them to, or at least does not arrange to have them. 

Let pastor and church consider carefully what is the best use 
of his limited strength for the Lord's-day work. Must he 
preach at least twice? If he can reach essentially two differ- 
ent congregations, as is the case in many of our cities and 
large towns, he must save himself for that second service. 
If he supplies more than one pulpit, consider his strength and 
see whether he can do more in the Sunday-school with others 
without lessening his ability for that part of his work which 
he must do alone. Let his part in the Sunday-school then 
be light and flexible, but let it be for all. A five-minute 
application at the close of the lesson will often be his best 
preaching service of the day. Can the Sunday-school be made 
to reach the congregation as a whole ? Can a Bible service 
be connected with it at which he may teach? Let the church 
see to it that he has the opportunity, and free his hands for 
such service. The question ought perhaps to be, What part 
does your church allow the pastor to take in the school? 

II. IN THE PULPIT. 

Here the important thing is that the pastor should remember 
the Sunday-school. If it is on his mind as one of the impor- 
tant departments of his and the church's work, the fact will 
find appropriate expression. It will be in the prayers : the 
needs of the school, of the teachers and officers will be 
brought before the Lord. It will always be among the notices 
with occasional words of especial invitation to its classes and 
to its teaching force. Reference will be made to it now and 



4.6 The Model Sunday-school. 

then in the sermon, as a field for Christian work and an 
opportunity for the study of God's Word. Once a year or so 
it will furnish the theme of the discourse, its prayers will be 
received, its wants set forth, and its value emphasized. Occa- 
sionally the pastor will preach to the Sunday-school, giving the 
service of praise into their hands. Indeed, in one church at 
least, the scholars are seated together in the gallery and every 
Sunday morning take part in the reading or repetition of Scrip- 
ture and in certain of the hymns. The pastor who does these 
things will of course have something for the young in all his 
sermons, that they may be attracted not only to the special but 
to the regular services of the church, as they will be where 
such things are done. He will perhaps shorten his ser- 
mons a little and enliven them a good deal if he remembers 
the Sunday-school and the young. He will occasionally preach 
on the lesson or on some theme which will help its explana- 
tion, especially when the subject is difficult or needs side lights. 
He will sometimes preach to parents about home study of 
the Bible, about home preparation for the Sunday-school, and 
about the importance of bringing their children with them to 
the public worship of the house of God. 



III. IN THE PARISH. 

This same remembrance will accompany the pastor outside 
of the pulpit and the Sunday-school room. He will of course 
not forget the school in his prayer-meeting. Then it will 
not infrequently form the theme of the conference and prayer. 
He will frequently talk over the interests of the school with 
his superintendent, both that he may learn more about it 
and be of more assistance. He will bear it in mind in his 
pastoral visits from house to house. He will have a list of 



The Sunday-school and the Pastor. 47 

the names of all the members of his Sunday-school as well as 
of the church ; he will call on them or see that they are called 
on by others. He can thus attract many to the other services, 
to regular attendance, and perhaps to membership in his 
church. He will inquire about them, learn from Christian 
parents and others about their characters and needs. There 
can be no better theme for conversation in the homes of his 
people than this. 

He can aid in the teachers' meeting. If there is none, 
he can often organize one. If there is one held occasionally 
and for business only, he may be able to secure its regularity 
and introduce the study of the lesson into it. In this he can 
take the lead, if he is especially fitted for such service, and if 
not, he can sit by and to an almost equal degree aid and direct 
the study. He should know if possible what and how his 
teachers are teaching, and should in some way guide them in 
this most important work. 

Do you say, " No pastor has time to do all this " ? At any 
rate, he has time for some of these things, which ought to be 
done in a well-regulated church and school. 



CHAPTER VI. 

J\)e Or^aijizatioi? of tl?e $UT)day-SQ\)Oo\. 

The Purpose of Organization. Organization is in order 
to efficiency. There should be just enough organization to 
accomplish this end and no more. A machine should be 
as simple as possible to do its work. Every needless wheel 
or band added increases friction and the chance of obstruc- 
tion, and is a hindrance instead of a help. Organization is not 
a thing to admire, but to work. And yet a well-organized and 
well-managed Sunday-school, like a well-constructed machine, 
is the only one that can do the best work. 

A written constitution is a plan of organization. It 
tells what the organization is to be ; it gives the name, states 
the object, defines the conditions of membership, names the 
officers, arranges for their election, indicates their various 
duties, and provides for its own amendment. There is no 
way so simple of preparing for these necessary things as by 
adopting a constitution. 

This both confers and limits authority. It determines who 
shall elect the officers and what the duties of each shall be. 
It locates the responsibility of classifying scholars and appoint- 
ing and removing teachers, of selecting helps and books, of 
disbursing charities. It is important that all these things 
should be definitely understood, both in order that they may 
be surely done and that they may be done by the right person 
or persons. 



The Organization of the Sunday-school. 49 

[Note. — We give a form of constitution for a Sunday-school. It is based upon one 
in use for some years, with modifications suggested by experience. It is arranged so that 
by omitting the words in brackets [ ] it is adapted to the wants of a school which 
is not connected with any church.] 

CONSTITUTION.- 

Article 1. Name. This organization shall be called the 

Sunday-school of 

Article 2. Object. The object of this Sunday-school shall be to study 
and teach the Holy Scriptures, for the purpose of leading all who are con- 
nected with it to an intelligent Christian faith and life. 

Article 3. Membership. All persons who express the purpose of 

attending regularly, may, after being present at consecutive sessions, 

be enrolled as members of this school. Officers, teachers, and adult mem- 
bers [who are also members of the church] shall alone be entitled to 
vote, except in the appropriation of contributions for benevolent purposes, 
in which case all contributors may vote. 

Article 4. Officers. The officers, as far as is practicable and needed, 
shall be a Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, Secretary, Treasurer, 
Librarian, and Chorister. [The Pastor of the church shall always be 
recognized as pastor of the Sunday-school. He with] the Superintendent, 
Assistant Superintendents, Secretary, and three teachers shall constitute an 
Executive Committee, of which the Superintendent shall be Chairman. 
These all shall hold their respective offices for one year, or until their 
successors shall have been elected. 

Article 5. Elections. A meeting for the election of officers shall 

be held annually on the day of 

The Superintendent shall be elected by ballot by the voting members of 
the school. [This election, however, shall not be valid unless ratified 
by vote of the church.] The other officers may be chosen in any manner 
decided upon at the time, or may be appointed by the superintendent, if 
not otherwise provided for. Vacancies may be filled at any time. 

Article 6. Duties of officers. 

(a) The Superintendent shall conduct the general exercises, preside 
at business meetings, classify scholars, and by all means in his power, both 
in school and out, labor to promote its best interests. 

(3) The Secretary shall keep a faithful record of the membership, 
attendance, contributions, and business meetings of the school, and report 
weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually, as may be required. 



50 The Model Sunday-school. 

(V) The Treasurer shall receive the funds of the school for its ex- 
penses or for charitable purposes, and shall pay them out only upon the 
order of the Executive Committee, and shall make a detailed report 
thereof at the annual meeting. 

(d) The Librarian shall have the care of and shall distribute the 
books, lesson helps, and other literature belonging to the school under 
direction of the Executive Committee. 

(e) The Chorister shall conduct the singing of the school, subject to 
the approval of the Superintendent. 

(/) The Executive Committee shall appoint and remove teachers, 
select and purchase lesson helps, library books, and other literature for the 
school, attend to its business, disburse its charities, and in every way possi- 
ble provide for its efficiency and welfare, always subject to a majority vote 
of the voting members of the school. 

Article 7. Duties of Teachers. It shall be the duty of the teach- 
ers to make thorough preparation for teaching the lesson; to attend the 
teachers' meetings; to be punctual and regular at the sessions of the 
school; to keep order in their classes; to strive to win the affection and 
hold the attention of the scholars; to pray for and if possible with the 
scholars; to visit them at their homes, especially when they are sick or 
have been absent; and by all proper means to try and secure the object 
for which this school is organized. 

Article 8. Classification. This Sunday-school shall -be divided, so 
far as practicable, into Primary, Intermediate, and Senior Departments. 
There shall also be organized Normal and Home Departments when in 
the judgment of the Executive Committee it shall seem best. 

Article 9. Sessions. This Sunday-school shall meet regularly every 

Sunday at o'clock, and the exercises shall usually be limited to one 

hour. 

Article 10. Amendments, This Constitution may be amended at 
any regular session of the school by a vote of three fourths of the voting 
members, provided that notice of the proposed amendment has been given 
at the preceding session [and provided that such amendment is first ap- 
proved by the church with which the school is connected]. 

This form may of course be modified to suit the needs of 
any school. Even where it is considerably changed it may be 
of use as a basis on which to build or from which to depart. 



The Organization of the Sunday-school. 5r 

A word may be necessary in regard to the importance of 
an Executive Committee. The session of the school is 
evidently not the place for the discussion or transaction of busi- 
ness. That children should have no part in deciding matters 
affecting the interests of the Sunday-school is as evident as 
that they should have no such part in meetings which discuss 
the interests of the day-schools or of the town. Nor is the 
teachers' meeting the best place for considering and acting 
wisely on such matters ; the attendance is too irregular and 
the responsibility borne too lightly. This is especially true in 
the larger schools. As in the church, the committee is the 
place for discussion and for planning. Dr. Schaufrler calls this 
the Superintendent's Cabinet. It should include the heads of 
departments when there are such, as the Superintendent of the 
Primary Department, and of others which may exist. It is the 
Church Committee of the school, which can at least prepare 
plans for the adoption of the school. 

The reasons for the part given to the church in the organi- 
zation of the Sunday-school are fully stated in the chapter 
on the relations of the school to the church. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Classification aijd Departments. 

CLASSIFICATION . 

i. Classification of Scholars. The superintendent has 
no more important work to do than to classify his scholars. 
The name class implies that a number of individuals possess- 
ing common characteristics are placed together. Mere indis- 
criminate groups are not classes. 

(i) By capacity. The true principle of classification 
is that those of similar attainments and capacities should be 
grouped. They will be able to receive and profit by the same 
teaching. Their position in the public schools will often be a 
good criterion by which to judge of the ability of boys and 
girls. Besides this, they will ordinarily prefer to be classed 
on Sunday with those with whom they are associated during 
the week. 

(2) By age. In addition to this it is not improper to 
consider age. It is humiliating for one to be placed in a class 
of those much younger. It is better to regard this feeling than 
to drive a backward pupil out of the school. Then too it 
brings an added stimulus to bear upon him . 

(3) By social position. This should not be regarded 
from the standpoint of pride on the part of those rich or cul- 
tivated, but only for the comfort and self-respect of the poor 
and ignorant. To some of these, association with those better 
dressed or better mannered than they would be uncomfortable : 
to others it would not be. Take care that all such are made 



Classification and Departments. 53 

to feel at home and indirectly do all possible to keep these 
distinctions out of sight. 

2. Classification of Teachers. It is just as important 
to classify teachers as scholars. 

(1) As to the grade of scholars which they are 
fitted to instruct. In other schools this is carefully con- 
sidered. It is equally important in the school for the study of 
God's Word. Some can teach the adults, some the boys, and 
some the girls and some the little ones. Each should, as far 
as possible, be given the work to do which each especially en- 
joys and for which each is fitted. It would be very strange if 
in any school of considerable size all were adapted to the same 
grade of pupils. The general law of averages and variety may 
generally be trusted to provide material. 

And then each teacher when his adaptation is found should 
be kept to the grade for which he is fitted. It is better there- 
fore to change the class every year or two. A class which has 
grown up with one teacher from little children to young man- 
hood or womanhood has not ordinarily had the best care. 
The probability is that there has been too much monotony in 
the method and the matter of the teaching. Let each change 
be really, and be recognized as, an advance in both of these 
respects. This wisely done will help to hold the scholars. 

(2) As to the number each can care for. For all 
have not the same capacity in this respect. It is so with 
ministers : many can preach to a hundred who could not 
possibly preach to a thousand. It is so with overseers of any 
kind of work. One builder can superintend four men who 
would be at his wits' end with twenty to keep at work. Give 
each good teacher as large or small a class as he can do his 
best with. If you have class rooms, it would be better to have 
six first-rate teachers with twenty scholars each than twenty 
inferior teachers with six in each class. The best Sunday- 
schools are coming to this : fewer teachers and larger classes. 



54 The Model Sunday-school. 

DEPARTMENTS. 

The Natural Division. The smallest schools cannot 
well have any division except into classes; or rather can have 
no union of classes into departments. It will ordinarily have 
at least three classes which correspond in grade to the three 
most necessary divisions : that is, for children, youth, and 
adults. 

i. Primary, including children up to nine years of age. 
Sometimes in a large school this department may well be 
subdivided into those who can not and those who can read. 

2. Intermediate. Those from ten to sixteen years old. 
This too is capable of division into Junior and Intermediate 
grades, the dividing line coming at about thirteen years of age. 

3. Senior. Those above the age and attainments just 
suggested. These, in a school of moderate size, will natu- 
rally be divided into young people's and adult classes. 

There should also be, in every school where it is possible, a 
Normal class for the preparation and training of teachers. 

A Home Department is also an important, and should be 
considered an essential, part of a Sunday-school. 

The Teaching Appropriate for Each. As to teaching, 
the Primary Department should emphasize the stories of the 
Bible ; the Intermediate its histories, which are stories of the 
chosen people and the Christian Church. The young people 
should be led into the study of the Bible as a whole and of 
the parts as related to it. The older classes naturally study 
the doctrines and principles of revelation. 

All this may be done by a wise preparation and use of the 
International System, emphasizing for these different classes : 
(1) the stories; (2) the connected history; (3) the book 
and its contents ; and (4) the truth of Scripture, and their 
illustration by experience. 



Classification and Departments. 55 

Certain it is that for the main body of the school nothing 
better has yet appeared. Whether the infant class and the 
adult Bible classes may not do a better thing is not so sure. 

I. THE PRI3IARY DEPARTMENT. 

1. The Name. It is much better to call it this than to 
speak of it as the Infant Class. There may indeed be an 
infant class in it, but that name, if used at all, should be con- 
fined to the littlest ones. Even then it is not strictly appro- 
priate. An infant is properly one who cannot speak. Even 
in the legal sense an infant is one who cannot appear per- 
sonally in court. The name Primary Department dignifies it 
far more, and the failure to dignify the Sunday-school has 
wrought mischief in it all the way up. 

In addressing them too, it is better to say " Children," 
than " Little children," and to remember that simple speech is 
acceptable to everybody, but baby talk is nauseous to all but 
babies ; and if they could express themselves, even they might 
protest against it. 

2. The Place, (a) This should be if possible a sepa- 
rate room. It should be so separate that singing in it will 
not disturb the other departments, and that their singing or 
reading together will not distract the attention of the little ones. 
If there can be no separate room, a simple screen may 
serve, or a blackboard may be so placed as to secure some 
privacy. Get the children as far as you can by themselves, 
where their attention will not be called away and where they 
and you can be free and not disturb others, (b) It should be 
a cheerful room, as pleasant as it can be made, light, 
decorated with agreeable colors, and every way homelike. If 
ever so plain, at least it should be clean. A few bright pictures 
should adorn the walls, — some of the lesson pictures, perhaps, 



56 The Model Sunday-school. 

—-flowers in their time, and autumn leaves in theirs, and ever- 
greens for Christmas should be brought in to add to its attrac- 
tiveness. If the school is where there are none of these 
natural adornments, ingenuity and love may find something to 
relieve the bareness. 

(7) It should be comfortable. If it be possible, have 
low benches or little chairs for the children. You cannot 
expect attention if their backs ache from lack of proper 
support. Make them comfortable and give them the feeling 
that the church has made special and thoughtful provision for 
them. 

3. The General Exercises. Let these all be easily 
intelligible to the youngest. There is enough in the 
other services of the church which is to them in an unknown 
tongue. In this one place let everything be for them. We 
do not believe that it is best for them to try to share in the 
service of worship of the main school. That cannot be per- 
fectly adapted to both classes. Either it will be made too 
juvenile for the school, and so especially unacceptable to the 
other boys and girls, or too old for the youngest children. It 
is gratifying for a superintendent to see all the school together ; 
but that is not nearly as important as that all the scholars 
should receive the most profit. 

What they may have in common. If they have 
anything in common, let it be only an opening hymn which all 
can sing, verses which all can repeat, or the Lord's Prayer, in 
which all can unite. Do not ask the little ones to sit by and 
see the school do things which they do not understand and in 
which they cannot take part. 

The singing should be made much of. It should be 
simple in its melody and of quite limited range, not very 
high nor very low for young voices. The sentiment of the 
hymns should be as simple as the tunes ; they should express 



Classification and Departments. 57 

child praise and love and trust, in the simplest words and with 
the simplest feeling. 

The words should be repeated by the children after the 
teacher, until they know them perfectly, for those who most 
properly belong in this department are those who cannot read. 
Their memories must serve them for a hymn book. 

The words should be taught either separately, or taught 
with the music line by line. A song roll will help those who 
can read, and they will give confidence to the rest. If the 
printed words can be sent home with the request that the 
mothers teach them to the children during the week, a double 
good is done. 

The meaning of all new hymns should be explained to 
the children, or brought out by question and answer, so that 
the teacher may be sure that they are not merely sounds re- 
peated parrot-like, but are sense to the mind and are under- 
stood and if possible felt. 

There are many little motion songs, which interest the 
minds and by action rest the bodies of the children. Use 
some of these, by all means. 

If there is no separate room for the Primary Department, 
the children can be taught the same songs, and sing them only 
with their lips or in a whisper. You cannot expect them to 
keep still or interested as long continuously in any one exercise 
as the older ones. 

One of the standard hymns that are used in the public 
worship of the church can be sung at each session with profit. 
This fits the children to join in that service and helps to in- 
crease their interest in it. If the pastor knows that even the 
little children can unite in them, he will be likely to give out 
these hymns more often than others. 

The prayers should be simple too, so simple that the chil- 
dren can easily repeat the sentences as they are spoken by 



58 The Model Sunday-school. 

their teachers. And this is an excellent way to secure their 
attention and participation, as well as to learn to pray in short 
and intelligible words. 

They should be brief. A minute or two is enough to ex- 
press the simple praise and thanks and petitions which are 
appropriate to such a place. 

The children should be taught to be reverent, to bow their 
heads and close their eyes and fold their hands in prayer. 
Pveverence may be taught by the posture of the body : it can- 
not be without it. 

4. The General Teaching. In a small school where 
the primary department is properly only an infant class, the 
youngest class of all, the teaching must probably all be done 
by one teacher. Where all are in one class, if possible 
secure a private room or some privacy in the general room. 
While it may be more difficult to follow rules in such a school, 
that lack may be made up for by the greater familiarity and 
homelikeness of the service. 

Variety is essential. Here it is just as important as in a 
larger school to remember that to keep the bodies of little chil- 
dren long in one position or their minds occupied with the 
same thing is contrary to the laws of their nature. Physical and 
mental restlessness are sure to follow, and restlessness means 
inattention. Keep the scholars busy and with frequent change 
of exercises. 

In a primary department of some size, the teaching should 
be done both by its superintendent and its teachers ; there 
should be both general and class teaching. 

The general teaching which precedes the class 
teaching should be a memory drill on the Golden Texts, 
or such other verses or truths as are being committed to 
memory, and on such general facts connected with the Bible 
history and the life of Christ as such children ought to know. 
Patient repetition is the only means to a faithful memory. 



Classification and Departments. 59 

The eye should be addressed frequently. The blackboard 
here is an indispensable aid. It need not be used elaborately 
or with artistic skill. The imagination of the child is 
largely developed, and a rude suggestion on the board accom- 
panied by an explanation of what is meant is full of mean- 
ing to them. A child who can see a doll in a clothespin and 
a baby in a doll can supply your lack in art. 

A word or two, a line or two, made in their sight and ex- 
plained as made is better than an elaborate picture brought in 
complete. Much of the elaborate blackboard work is quite 
beyond their comprehension. 

Objects presented to the eye are always full of interest to 
children. A spool of thread, a blade of grass, a bird in a 
cage, a few blocks to represent houses, a hundred other 
familiar things may be used to illustrate the facts and truths 
taught. We know a mother who carried her little children 
through almost all the Bible scenes and stories by sitting with 
them on the nursery floor and representing the actors and 
events with men and women and other objects rudely cut with 
scissors from newspapers. 

Surprise is an important element in teaching children. 
Keep that with which you are to interest them out of sight 
until you need it for use. If you have a lesson picture, do 
not produce it until it is needed. Let them look at the 
illustration of the preceding lesson up to that moment. So 
with the blackboard, the song roll, any charts you may use or 
any objects : produce them when wanted and keep them out of 
sight when not in use. 

The general teaching after the class teaching should 
be in the way of review, to find out from the scholars what 
they have learned, and to supplement the teaching. Drill on 
the Golden Text for the day. Get the children to tell you the 
main facts and teachings of the lesson. Then srive them the 



60 The Model Sunday-school. 

central truth clearly, with illustration, so that if possible it shall 
be associated in their minds with that lesson. Do nothing to 
lead them away from the lesson for the day, but deepen the 
engraver's lines by going over them. 

5. The Class Teaching. 

The subject should be the appointed lesson for the day. 
If there is more time than is needed, it can be used to prepare 
the class for the general teaching ; but the two had better be 
distinct. 

The story element in the lesson should be made prom- 
inent. If it contains none, its topic should be illustrated 
by one. Let it be simple, interesting but unexciting, appealing 
to the imagination rather than to the feeling. Children learn 
by incidents rather than by principles. Let the application 
be evident and if possible let the children point it out. 

6. The Responsibility of this Work. The teacher 
should remember the responsibility of teaching the little ones. 
Their unquestioning faith should lead to great care as to what 
they are taught. Be honest with yourself and with them. Do 
not put off their questions with answers that do not satisfy 
you. It is far better to say, " I don't know," than to pretend 
to know what you don't. They are quick to find out shams, 
and to trust honesty. Do not teach )'our doubts. Give them 
something positive to accept. 

7. The Religious Needs of Childhood are not unlike 
those of older people. They, need an object for their love. 
Lead them to see Jesus : there is no character so winsome as 
his, there is no work which so calls for grateful affection as his. 

Their faith is ready; let it be guided to their heavenly 
Father and to Jesus the Saviour. Teach them to trust him in 
everything. 

Their consciences are quick. They ought neither to be 
sluggish nor morbid. Help them to a. healthy and clear dis- 



Classification and Departments, 61 

cernment of right and wrong; and help them to see it for 
themselves. 

They need sympathy ; and they have a right to look to 
their teacher for it. Their sorrows are as real as their sins. 
The teacher can comfort them in the true sense of giving them 
strength to bear their troubles. 

The thing they need least is to have their feelings excited. 
These should certainly not be played with. Mere emotion 
which does not lead to action is bad for anybody, most of all 
for children. Do not try to make them cry over the stories of 
the Bible. Do not depict for them the sorrows of Gethsemane 
or the agony of the cross. Let the tone of the class be quiet, 
childlike, placid like that of the ideal home, and lead the 
children by gentle steps to the gracious Saviour. 

8. What the Primary Department should Accom- 
plish. 

Before the children leave the primary department or class 
for the intermediate they should give proof that they have 
made certain definite attainments, that they have learned 
thoroughly certain things. They should be able to repeat the 
Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, 
and perhaps the Twenty-third Psalm and the Beatitudes. They 
should know the main stories of the Bible and especially of 
the life of Christ. 

Having been examined on these things, before the superin- 
tendent, pastor, and parents, they should be formally pro- 
moted. In some cases they receive a simple diploma, rolled 
and tied with ribbon. Teachers should be secured in advance 
for the new classes, and if they have met in a separate room, 
it is a good plan to have them march in to their new places, 
the school rising and their teacher waiting to receive them. A 
few words from the superintendent or pastor and special re- 
membrance in the prayers of the day may help to make this 
service both impressive and useful. 



62 The Model Sunday-school. 

9. The Time and its Distribution. An hour is as long 
as the younger children should be detained for any service. It 
should be all occupied, with no delays or intervals. As to the 
distribution of this time between the general exercise of wor- 
ship and teaching and the class teaching, the exigencies of 
each case and the special gifts of those in charge are the only 
basis for a wise decision. 



II. THE INTERMEDIATE DEPARTMENT. 

The advance to this grade should be understood to be defi- 
nite and significant. It should mean not simply that the 
scholars have grown so large or so old, but that they have 
learned so much. Having been formally transferred, there 
should be a change in the mode of teaching. They 
are now old enough to sit still longer at a time and to give 
attention to more continuous study. It is not necessary now 
to teach so much by object lessons, though now and then some- 
thing taken from the teacher's pocket to illustrate a point may 
add to the interest of the lesson, and lead to the expectancy of 
an occasional surprise. 

Locate places. Maps should be freely and constantly 
used. A place should not be named without locating it, until 
the scholars have them so impressed upon their minds that 
they can see them and describe their location without looking 
at a map. 

Illustrate times and manners. Bring pictures into 
the class which illustrate the dress, the implements, and the 
manners of the people of Bible times. Make everything as 
vivid as you can. Get the boys and girls during the week to 
look up and tell about these things. Make the men and 
women of the Bible real to them, as you can only do by 
showing them in the times in which they lived, with their 



Classification and Departments, 63 

own dress and manners, and with the knowledge of God 
which belonged to them. 

Teach historically. Show what the words spoken must 
have meant to those who heard them, and what must have 
been meant by those who spoke. That makes an historical 
study full of interest and life, and brings to view the real men 
and the real teachings of the Bible. Do not bring them down 
into the nineteenth century and give them our knowledge and 
place them in ,our times. 

If you are teaching the life of the Christ, remember 
that it was a life, one part of it being different from another. 
Teach them clearly the difference between the preparatory 
period and the three years (1) of obscurity, (2) of popularity, 
(3) of opposition, and locate each lesson and each teaching 
in regard to the whole. This of itself will make many things 
clear and interesting. If you are teaching the words of 
Christ, learn whom he is addressing in each case and you can 
teach his meaning better. Get at the principles of his teach- 
ings rather than at the particular precepts, and impress these 
principles on the minds and hearts of your pupils. The appli- 
cations may change, but the principles never do. 

If you are teaching the growth of the Apostolic 
Church, find the great steps of progress — they will be clearly 
pointed out in almost any helps ; they will reveal themselves to 
you, if you will read the text often enough ; show the condi- 
tion of each church addressed in the Epistles, and then you 
can make the relations of the special exhortations plain. That 
will give individuality and life to the whole and to each part. 

These injunctions are applicable to a degree to all teaching 
of all classes of scholars, but they are especially important for 
these boys and girls who are being taught thoroughly in the 
day-school, whose minds are open and eager if once their 
attention is secured, and who want information. You can 



64 The Model Sunday-school. 

make the story of Israel and of the Christ seem to them as 
idle tales, or as the most real history and life, according to your 
treatment of them. 

Remember that the main business of the teacher is 
teaching, not exhortation. Draw out the application from 
your scholars. Put it in few words yourself, but be thoroughly 
in earnest in those few words. Let them see Jesus, and let 
him draw them to himself. 



III. THE SENIOR DEPARTMENT. 

For the young people's classes, if they have been well in- 
structed up to this time, it is not necessary to spend much 
time on the details of the Bible stories. It is always well to 
locate the teaching of a particular lesson in its place in the 
history or the life of which it treats. The principles laid down 
for teaching in the Intermediate Department should never be 
forgotten or neglected. 

Here, however, your teaching may take a wider range. 
You may extend your lesson over its surroundings, you may get 
the full sweep of the incidents or teachings of a whole period. 
You may give more attention to the various books from which 
the lessons are drawn. You may introduce some normal work 
without giving it the name. If you have a class of high school 
boys, you may connect your lesson with the Roman or other 
history which they are studying. You must exert all your 
ingenuity and skill and intelligence to hold and to instruct 
them. 

Here comes in naturally that most difficult question which is 
always arising : — 

How to Hold the Young Men. About this time in their 
lives or a little earlier they begin to be restive and to wish to 
withdraw from the Sunday-school. How can they be held? 



Classification and Departments. 65 

In general the answer is, by making it worth their while to 
continue in it. Expedients will be of little avail. 

1. By the attendance of older people. It will do 
some good if their fathers and mothers continue to go too, if 
the older people generally are there ; especially if those a little 
older than they are its regular members! The general influ- 
ence of such example has some power. 

2. By dignity of general exercises. So, too, it is 
important that general exercises of the school be dignified and 
worthy of their years. Every time the superintendent addresses 
the school as children, he does just so much to drive those 
who are not children away. Not only are they not children, 
but they do not w r ant any one for a moment to confound them 
with the children. And if children's talk is heard and chil- 
dren's prayers are prayed or little children's hymns are sung, 
they feel far more out of place and are made far more uncom- 
fortable by these things than are those who have been old long 
enough to be assured of it. It is not that they are afraid of 
the word " school," but they are just now busily engaged in 
putting away childish things and they do not want them con- 
tinually replaced before them. Dignify the school if you 
would keep the older scholars. On this account also, if 
possible, have the little children's department by itself. 

3. By instruction suited to their intelligence. But 
positively these young people must have instruction suited to 
their age and intelligence. They have been accustomed to it, 
many of them, in the high school, the academy or the college 
— or at least to advanced reading in the intervals of business ; 
they must be led on and up in the Sunday-school or they 
will not continue to come. The teaching hints which have 
been given may be pondered over again in the light of this 
fact. Fresh information is the best attraction to them. They 
want to know more, and though they may not be willing to 



66 The Model Sunday-school. 

work for it much, they may be made eager to receive it, and 
out of this may grow a more positive appetite and desire. 

4. By honest intellectual treatment. Honest treat- 
ment is also an absolute demand of those of this class. 
They have come to a time when their minds have ceased to be 
merely receptive. They are inquiring, and are taking up many 
beliefs which they have inherited and are asking for their 
grounds. It is a most critical time for them. Will they grasp 
the truths to which they are accustomed or will they let them 
go? It is no use to say to them now, " It is wrong to raise the 
question. " In the first place, it is not wrong ; it is the only 
way to a faith of their own. In the second place, the ques- 
tions being already raised, nothing but a reasonable answer 
can settle them. Treat them then not as heretics but only as 
inquirers after truth, and give them no anszvers to their ques- 
tions which do not satisfy your own mind. The importance of 
this counsel cannot be overestimated. Better say, " I don't 
know," a hundred times, than to try to silence some honest 
question by a disingenuous answer on which your own faith 
does not and can not rest. If you cannot answer them, go 
with them and together lay your question before one in whose 
wisdom and mental integrity you both have confidence. More 
young persons are betrayed away from their faith by the 
neglect of this rule than in almost any way. 

Sometimes a topical study is good for senior classes, a 
course really in Biblical theology, gathering together the 
teachings of the Old Testament and of the New. Only great 
care must be exercised here not to make this a mere matter 
of proof texts gathered by the sound and not by the intended 
sense. No single text of Scripture should ever be used to 
prove a doctrine without reference to its context and study of 
its original intent. A careless gathering of proof texts for 
topical study has been the origin of more bad theology and 



Classification and Departments. 67 

more dishonest thinking than all other sources combined. 
Guarded against this evil, this method of study may be of 
great value. It should be always begun with the earlier teach- 
ings of the Old Testament and come on historically to the 
New. There is light in the Old Testament, but " grace and 
truth came by Jesus Christ," and it was the Comforter who was 
later to lead the disciples into all truth. 

Invite questioning. Another way is to let each scholar 
bring to the class the question from the lesson which most 
interests him, with all the light he has been able to bring, and 
open it up for further light. 

For the more mature classes in this department their 
own inclination as to the subject and method of their study 
should be consulted. There is no reason why the regular 
lessons of the school may not interest and profit them. They 
can be studied with reference to their doctrinal and ethical 
teachings. This class of students is more interested in the 
abstract principles of the Bible and in the teachings of expe- 
rience than the younger classes. Only, if it has a teacher, do 
not let such a class become a debating society, as too often 
happens. Especially, do not let some man with a hobby get 
in and ride it round the circle formed by the class. If neces- 
sary to stop that, get him out by some means. Let it be a 
class that shall state and compare their views ; let there be no 
discussion, no trying to win others over to their views on the 
part of any ; but after the various opinions have been stated, 
let the teacher declare his best wisdom on the subject and go 
on to what he desires to bring up next. 

The teacher of such a class too should keep his class to 
the Bible. It is a Bible class. Mr. A's notions and Mr. B's 
ideas of what ought to be are of no value to it, however much 
they may be to these good brethren themselves. The only 
question of value in the class is, " What is the teaching of the 



68 The Model Sunday-school. 

Word of God?" except perhaps this equally important one, 
"What are the limits of its teaching?" 



IV. THE NORMAL. CLASS, OR DEPARTMENT. 

Good teachers are made by training. Good teachers 
do not come to be such by accident. If they inherit the traits 
which are desirable, they do not thus come into possession of 
the knowledge that is needed. 

When to hold the Normal Class. This class may be 
held at the same time with the school ; but, if this is done, the 
disadvantage is that those comprising it are the ones who are 
needed for temporary and substitute teachers, and that many 
who are teaching regularly need its training most of all. It 
had better be at some other time, perhaps before or after the 
midweek service of the church, or in connection with a teach- 
ers' meeting, or whenever the attendance can be most regular. 
Here no lesson should be missed. It should be made a 
definite engagement. 

It should perhaps be held for a limited time each year. 
A course of weekly meetings extending over from three to six 
months, with a definite time fixed for closing, is best. 

The leader of the class should be the best qualified person 
who can be secured. It may be the pastor, the superintend- 
ent, some public or other school teacher — whoever can do it 
most regularly and efficiently. It does not require great abil- 
ity or genius to teach a normal class successfully, though of 
course these gifts may do much to add to its interest. The 
main qualities needed are patience and clearness. Frequent 
repetition of the main things to be learned is the secret of a 
thorough mastery of them. To lead in this drill is one of the 
main offices of the leader of such a class. 

There are two lines of study open to such a class. 



Classification and Departments, 69 

1. The character and contents of the Bible. Its 

books, writers, periods, geography, its history and its moral 
and religious teachings. 

The object of this class is to impart a thorough knowledge 
of the main facts connected with the Bible as a whole. This 
knowledge will facilitate the preparation of any particular 
lesson, It will cause the various facts and truths to fall into 
their right places in the system. It will give that surrounding 
knowledge which enables the teacher to answer questions not 
within the limits of the lesson, and which is full of suggestion 
in the actual work of teaching. 

2. The principles of teaching, especially of teaching 
Bible truth ; that is, how best to impart the knowledge 
gained. 

There are a variety of books well fitted to guide the study 
of classes of this kind, a few of which are named and com- 
mended. 



The Bible, the Sunday-school Teachers' Text-book. Alfred Holburn, m.a. 

The Bible. Alvah Hovey, d.d., ll.d. 

Bible Studies. A. E. Dunning, d.d. 

Studies in Old Testament History. J. L. Hurlbut, d.d. 

Supplemental Lessons. J. L. Hurlbut, d.d. 

The Four Gospels. J. L. Hurlbut, D.D. 

The Life of Christ. James Stalker, dd. 

A Short History of the English Bible. J. M. Freeman, d.d. 



The Seven Laws of Teaching. J. M. Gregory 9 ll.d. 
How to Teach the Bible. J. M. Gregory, ll.d. 
The Young Teacher. Wm. H. Groser, B.SC 
Outline Normal Lessons. J. L. Hurlbut, D.D. 



JO The Model Sunday-school. 

V. THE HOME DEPARTMENT. 

One of the evidences that the Sunday-school is alive is that 
it has been always developing in new directions. It has readily 
taken up new problems and adapted itself to new conditions. 
It has taken ever-widening views of its opportunities and sought 
to meet them. 

The Home Department has come to be one of the most 
hopeful of these expansions of the Sunday-school idea. The 
idea of home study is not new : parents have been 
urged to share it with their children for many years. It is in 
line with the University Extension idea, which proposes to 
guide home study for those who cannot come to the centers 
of learning. Indeed the idea seems to be included in the in- 
junction to Abraham in regard to the religious training of his 
household. 

The beginning of the present movement was in a 
plan set forth in 1881 by Dr. W. A. Duncan for the formation 
of Home Classes, to be connected with existing Sunday-schools, 
which was adopted by the Executive Committee of the New 
York State Sunday-school Association and recommended by 
them in a circular. 

About three years later, Doctors Dike and Dunning contrib- 
uting to its development, this grew into the Home Department 
plan, and the Congregational Sunday-School and Pub- 
lishing Society prepared .visitors' blanks, an explanatory 
letter, and cards for the agreement and for the report of 
study. Since that time the plan has been adopted by the 
Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Methodist Episcopalians, the 
United Brethren, the original publishers granting permission to 
use the copyrighted matter. From 1890 on, the idea gained 
favor rapidly and has spread through all these denominations 
and into interdenominational organizations. The idea has 



Classification and Departments. J I 

gone across the ocean and has taken root in England and 
Europe. 

Its object is to carry the benefits of the Sunday-school, in 
its Bible study, its connection with the church and all its privi- 
leges, to those who cannot regularly come to it. It has been 
thought that these were only for the service of those who could 
attend : this department carries it into the home. 

Its Need. There are many who are so situated that they 
cannot be at the same place of worship regularly on the Lord's 
day. Some live too far away and have no means of convey- 
ance. Others are detained by their duties to the children 
or the sick. Others are away from home a considerable part of 
the time. To these this compensation is proposed for their 
absence from the place of gathering on the Lord's day. 

Its Method. A visitor is first needed. Some one to 
go kindly to the home, to propose the plan, to secure the sign- 
ing of the agreement, and to leave the Quarterly. This visit 
should be repeated at least once a quarter, to receive the 
report card and to renew the lesson help. It may well be 
made oftener in many cases ; it is best if it ripens into per- 
sonal friendship. It is not to be confined to those who are 
outside of the church or congregation. It is well to begin 
with the members of the church who can not or who do not 
attend the Sunday-school, and to secure their cooperation. If 
they will participate, it takes away the feeling that this is work 
among the heathen, and makes it only work among the homes. 
There need be no more organization than this to carry 7 on a 
small Home Department successfully. Members can be added 
to it by correspondence. A superintendent is needed, with a 
corps of visitors in a large school, or where the work is under- 
taken on a large scale. This officer should be a man or a 
woman who is an enthusiastic believer in this work, and who 
can advise and guide the visitors. They may often be a 



J2 The Model Sunday-school. 

Sunday-school or Christian Endeavor committee. The super- 
intendent had better act as secretary also, and so keep the 
reports and records well under his own eye. 

It is a department of the school, like the Primary 
Department, though not meeting with the school nor indeed 
meeting together. It should be thus recognized. The names 
of all its members should be entered' on the roll of the school. 
They should be furnished with lesson helps, papers, and library 
books as other members of the school are. They should be 
reported to the school at least quarterly, and occasionally a 
report or letter should go from the school to them. They 
should understand that they are invited and are always wel- 
come to the sessions of the school, or to any of the meetings 
of the church. They should have the opportunity of cooper- 
ating by contributing to the expenses of the school and to its 
charitable work. They should be especially invited to any 
festival or social gatherings of the school, and, if possible, there 
should be at least an annual rally for a friendly meeting of all 
the members of this department. 

Its Flexibility. It can secure the membership of a single 
individual, or of the members of a family, or of a group of 
neighbors to unite in the study. It is as flexible as the vary- 
ing conditions. 

The advantages of this plan are (i) that it provides 
simple Christian work. It only needs a kind heart, a 
sympathetic way, tact to enable one thus to aid in extending 
the benefits of a regular study of the Bible. (2) That it gives 
a definite purpose in that canvassing of neighborhoods 
and visitation of homes which ought to be somehow done in 
every community. It is easier to do it in connection with this 
than with almost any other plan, and good may be done in 
many incidental ways. (3) It adds to the numbers in 
the church schools. Many who begin in the Home De- 



Classification and Departments, 73 

partment come to desire the aid which they can only get by 
attendance. Instead of acting as a substitute, it serves as an 
inducement to such attendance. (4) It covers the vaca- 
tion periods. The study of the lessons may be continued 
by the members of schools which either are dispersed in the 
summer or prevented from gathering in the winter. Many 
schools have been made evergreen in this way. In South 
Dakota a large Home Department composed of such schools 
is kept up through the winter by an energetic missionary of 
our Society. (5) But the greatest gain of all is that which it 
most directly seeks. It brings the ones, the tens, the hun- 
dreds, the thousands into organic association with this 
branch of the Christian Church, into regular study of the 
Word of God, and thus by his blessing in many cases into a 
personal relation to the Saviour of men 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Jl?e Superiptetydetyt. 

The Ideal should stimulate, not discourage. Upon 
the superintendent more than upon any one else depends the 
character, the progress, the work, and the welfare of the school. 
A model superintendent makes a model school. An imperfect 
superintendent will probably have an imperfect school. The 
rule for the school is " Get the best superintendent you can/' 
and for the man, " Be the best superintendent you can." 
While we hold up a high ideal, we know it is an ideal, which 
never has been reached in all respects by any one, and which 
is not likely to be. It will serve a poor purpose if it should 
discourage and not stimulate. Do not use it to measure your- 
self by, but as a mark to strive after. 

What should be the character, the qualifications, the aims, 
and the duties of a model superintendent? 

I. HIS CHARACTER AND REPUTATION. 

That is, what the man himself should be. Because his work 
is Christian work, he should be a Christian man ; one who 
loves and trusts and follows Christ. He should be a man of 
good report, honest and upright, and beyond reproach in his 
daily life. These are the two important things, and of the two 
the latter is the more essential. If I could not secure a pro- 
fessedly Christian man to superintend, I would not prevent 
the people from gathering to study God's Word ; but I would 

74 



The Superintendent. 75 

rather close the doors of any school than to ha^e it endorse 
any man by putting him into such a position whether a member 
of the church or not, of questionable life or reputation. It 
will do more harm than good. But the superintendent cannot 
be too really and heartily a man of God, a spiritual Christian. 
His work should be done under the highest motive, and he 
should be what it is the object of the school to make each 
pupil in it. For the very nature and aim of his work he should 
be all this. The reputable life he should surely have attained ; 
the spiritual life he should be earnestly seeking. 

II. QUALIFICATIONS. 

The necessary qualifications for his work also depend upon 
its nature. What he is to do determines what he needs to be. 
He is to superintend a school, that is, to oversee and guide it 
in all its activities and interests. He is to endeavor to secure 
the best results from all its services and work. 

1. Will: for General Control. He is, first of all, to 
lead in the general exercises, as they are usually called, of the 
school, and to maintain order and interest in them. That he 
may secure good order during the time of the general service 
he must be a man (or woman) of will, of force, of purpose, 
of self-control. This is a quality which lies back of qualities 
and makes them effective. One who has it secures ready 
obedience or compliance with his purpose. It accompanies a 
quiet manner, a simple dignity, an evident expectancy that the 
thing asked will be done. A boisterous, nervous, uneasy way 
usually is the indication of its absence, and fails of its results. 
A gift by nature largely, it may be cultivated by the maintenance 
of a steady purpose, and by the calming power of a prayerful 
preparation for the work. It is patient, of unruffled good 
nature, with a contagious confidence. 



y6 The Model Sunday-school. 

The best way to secure order is to keep all occupied — - 
to have one exercise succeed another promptly. All gaps of 
unoccupied time are perilous. The school is without a head 
if the superintendent leaves his desk to consult about something 
he has neglected to arrange for at the proper time. The hold 
once lost is hard to be regained. A prompt, bright, expectant 
way is apt to win cooperation ; scolding never does it. The 
leader must be quiet in manner if he expects quiet from the 
school • self-controlled, if he expects control of others. Let 
him be in his own person and manner what he desires others 
to be. 

2. Reverence : for its Worship. He is to direct in the 
services of worship. He needs for this the spirit of reverence. 
If he has not this himself, he cannot impart it to his school. 
If he has it profoundly, he can make it felt by all, and can 
awaken a corresponding feeling in many. We do not like the 
name " opening " or " general " exercises. The singing, prayer, 
and Bible reading are services of worship ; they should be 
distinctly set forth as such, and the same spirit of devotion 
should enter into them in the Sunday-school as in the church 
— and a good deal more than is shown in many churches. 
There is a silence which is more than quiet — it is the hush 
of reverent attention. 

3. A Bible Student : for its Teaching. He is to super- 
intend the teaching of the school. He cannot leave it all to 
the teachers. He must be a teacher himself, to know and 
judge of the work done in the classes by his teachers. He 
must himself be a Bible student, a Bible lover, and apt to 
teach. If he is not all this, he should try to become such 
an one. He should set it before him as a thing to be accom- 
plished. He should not only study the lesson for the day, but 
try to get that general knowledge of the Bible which is larger 
than the lesson. He has connections between lessons to 



The Superintendent. J J 

explain, reviews to conduct, stimulating questions to ask, all 
of which will greatly help the school. A merely administrative 
superintendent can be of great sendee, but an intelligent, 
teaching superintendent of far greater. He can raise the 
character of the teaching all through his school. He can 
supplement imperfect teaching by adding at the end, either 
personally or through the pastor, the most important practical 
lesson. He can conduct the teachers' meeting, and in it or in 
a normal class can guide the teaching of his school. 

4. Tact : for the Administration. He is to superintend 
the teachers and their classes, to adapt the one to the other, 
to grade the new scholars, to make occasional changes in the 
classes. For this he needs tact, and that comes from a quick 
sympathy which enters into the feelings of others. It will 
enable him to suggest and even to criticize his teachers without 
hurting their feelings or driving them away ; to place his schol- 
ars, and to check their faults and spur them on to better work 
without offending them, and to secure the working of all the 
Sunday-school machinery without jar or friction. 

5. Loyalty: as an Officer of the Church. As the 
Sunday-school is a part of, and the superintendent properly, 
whether in form or not, an officer of, the church, he should be 
loyal to the church. He should always remember his relation 
to it; should never for a moment allow himself to regard his 
Sunday-school as a rival to it, but should try in every way to 
make it a help to every other part of the church organization. 
He should be always ready to consult pastor and committee, 
and should make no appointments without being sure that he 
is not conflicting with or embarrassing the church in any way. 

These are all qualities which the model superintendent must 
have. He must love Christ, his Word, and his people, and in 
the spirit of the Master try to help his scholars to intelligent 
faith in him. If this be his constant aim, his one thought, and 



78 The Model Sunday-scJiool. 

everything be subordinated to this, he will grow into the gifts 
and graces which are not his by natural endowment or present 
attainment. 



III. THE SUPERINTENDENT OUT OF SCHOOL.. 

This is quite as important as his work and ways during its 
sessions, for these depend for their efficiency on the foundation 
he has laid for them before coming. A good superintendent 
will have the interests of his school on his heart and mind 
much of his time. In the intervals of business or other care 
he will constantly turn to this. 

i. He will pray for it, for he will be a man of prayer. 
He will not undertake to do the Lord's work without the Lord's 
help. Thus he will prepare his own heart for his work. 

2* He will plan for it. He will prepare carefully for the 
conduct of its worship ; will select the Scripture to be read, the 
hymns to be sung, the person who is to lead in prayer. If he 
or others are to make any address, whether upon the regular 
or a supplementary lesson, the chanties of the school, or on 
any other matter, he will carefully prepare for this, so that 
nothing will be left to go haphazard. Then if at the last 
moment he sees fit for any reason ,to change any of these plans, 
he will do it as an improvement on what he has thus previously 
laid out. 

3. He will study his teachers and scholars. He 
will try to secure the cooperation of members of the church who 
are fit to teach. He will think often whether the right teachers 
and classes are together. He will consider the special gifts 
of each teacher, and try to place each where those gifts will 
be most effective. Thus he will study so far as he can all his 
scholars and their grouping. He will visit, converse, plan with 
his teachers separately and together, so as to secure the best 



The Superintendent. 79 

good of the school. He will never fail to regard and know its 
spiritual condition and to try to make that what it ought to be. 

If his is a large city school, he may not be able to know 
his scholars in their homes, perhaps not even his teachers ; but 
if this be impossible, he will try to accomplish the same 
acquaintance, at least with his teachers, in some other way. He 
will perhaps appoint a meeting for prayer and fellowship just 
before or after the school. He will have a teachers' meeting 
regularly, at greater or less intervals of time. And in these he 
will have it one important aim to meet his teachers personally 
and to confer with them about their work. He should be 
ready to talk over their special difficulties with them, and, with 
the list of the class in hand, the relation of the teacher to each 
scholar in the class. For he will of course have a complete 
list of all his classes, and a record of at least their attendance 
for each month, transcribed from the secretary's book. 

If his be a small school, he will know his teachers inti- 
mately, seeing them in their homes and his, and knowing their 
scholars through them and personally as well. 

4. He will do all he can to help them, both in the 
management of their classes and in the study of the Bible, by 
suggestion and by example. He will try to have some guiding 
hand in their preparation for teaching, if possible meeting with 
them for that purpose ; if not, seeing that they have the best 
aids for their personal study. 

If he does all this out of the school, he will be brought into 
such relations with it that when it is assembled he can lead it 
easily and without friction and almost guide it with his eye. 

IV. THE SUPERINTENDENT IN THE SCHOOL. 

i. He should be there in advance of the appointed 
hour. He should know that everything is ready and in run- 



80 The Model Sunday-school. 

ning order. He ought not to be obliged to do it himself in a 
well-regulated school, but in any he should see for himself that 
the seats are properly arranged, the song books distributed, and 
all the preliminary arrangements made. He should have his 
Bible open at the proper place for reading and the pages marked 
for the hymns to be given out. He should see that his assist- 
ants are on hand and his secretary and librarian. Then he 
may be ready for a word of welcome to the first comers. Some, 
knowing that they will surely find him there, may come for 
consultation. Or, if he feels the need of the last moments for 
preparation of heart for the service in which he is to engage, he 
may keep apart and by prayer and meditation come to his 
work more fully equipped. But without promptness, no one 
can make a good superintendent. 

2. The Service of Worship. And now the hour has 
come for calling the school to order. How shall it best 
be done? Let the simplest possible signal be given. If he 
can take his place and by simply raising his hand secure abso- 
lute quiet, that is better than the bell. If the bell is used, a 
single tap is all that should be made. Then he should wait 
until all is still. A Scripture sentence of salutation or of 
praise may be the best of openings, spoken by the superintend- 
ent and responded to by the school, and then a hymn. Let 
it be announced and only a strain played by the organ or piano, 
and then let all sing. The superintendent can do much to 
make this in reality a service of worship. He should think of 
it as such, he should speak of it as such, he should criticize it 
only as such. Let him make a broad distinction between 
practicing music and singing hymns of praise to God. 
The first is important in its place, but it is not the same thing 
with the latter. As to the best way to secure this, we must 
refer to the chapter on the music for the Sunday school. 

The Scripture reading may be done responsively, if 



The Superintendent. 8 1 

the passage selected be adapted for such use, as most of the 
psalms are \ or alternately, in which way with care even a 
narrative may be intelligently read \ or by the leader alone ; 
or by him and the school together, as may seem best. 

How to secure the use of the Bible. Much has been 
said about the importance of having the Bibles brought into 
and used in the school. The best way in which the superin- 
tendent can help in this is to select for the reading by the 
school some passage other than the lesson, but bearing on it. 
This will necessitate the use of Bibles by all the school, and if 
they are necessary they will be brought if not provided by the 
school. There has, however, been too much made perhaps of 
the bringing of his own Bible by each pupil. That is desirable 
but not essential. There is no saving grace nor proof of special 
sanctity in carrying even a limp Bible under one's arm. The 
important thing is to be able to use one, to know and to find 
its contents. A general exercise in the merely mechanical way 
of finding texts would be by no means an unprofitable use of 
time, as a kind of scriptural calisthenics. But it is not neces- 
sary to have Shakespeare complete in one volume in your hand 
every time you read a play. 

It is a valuable thing to have the school memorize Scrip- 
ture to repeat in unison at the opening of the school — 
the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, a few psalms, and 
some of the words of Jesus, may thus be made and kept 
familiar. 

The prayer should be earnest, brief, and simple, and led 
by one whom all respect. It should be adapted to express the 
religious feelings and wants of all the school. If the primary 
children are in these services, it should be simple enough for 
them : but it would be better on many accounts that in all their 
service they should be by themselves. 

The leader should wait until every member of the school is 



82 The Model Sunday-school. 

in the proper attitude, giving devout attention. A thankful, 
cheerful spirit should pervade the prayer. It should be explicit 
and unselfish, and should always remember any who are sick 
or in trouble. If the pastor or a teacher is to lead in this serv- 
ice, he should be notified at least a little beforehand, that he 
may be prepared to lead the devotions of the school in proper 
spirit and with the best expression. 

These are the essential parts of the service of worship, and 
in them all the most important need is a spirit of rever- 
ence : for this, quiet is the first condition ; an apprehension of 
what it means to worship is the second ; then those who will 
can praise and pray, and those who cannot will at least not 
interrupt them. 

3. The notices which are necessary should be given after 
the service of worship, or before it. Here, first of all, comes 
the notice of the public worship and preaching service of the 
church, with a cordial invitation to all to be there. Let there 
be some arrangement made in the church for seating without 
embarrassment any of the school who will attend. This is a 
matter which the superintendent might well have in mind as one 
of the incidental cares and privileges of his office. Other 
notices connected with the church, its prayer-meeting, its 
young people's gathering, or those more directly belonging to 
the school should be given. A conversational way of making 
these announcements is the best to secure attention and 
cooperation. 

The superintendent should keep the school well informed 
as to the special object of their charities, so that they 
may know to what they are giving and so that it may be a real 
and worthy object in their thought. 

4. And now the time for the teaching has come. Care 
should be taken not to prolong the general exercises unduly. 
They can be just as devout and have more spirit in them, if 
condensed. 



The Superintendent. 83 

But perhaps the teachers are not quite ready for their classes 
yet. Our system of lessons is not absolutely connected or 
consecutive. If all the teachers were prepared to make the 
connection of the day's with the preceding lesson 

clear, the superintendent would have no duty here. But the 
fact is few teachers have this clearly in their own minds. We 
suggest that just before the lesson the superintendent take not 
more than three minutes in which to bridge over the chasm 
between the last lesson and that of the day, or that he secure 
some one, pastor or teacher, for this sendee who can do it well. 

Or if a supplementary lesson is to be taught upon the 
general structure of the Bible, the history it contains, the Holy 
Land, or the life of Christ, this is the place for it, before the 
lesson and not after, and always with the time which is to be 
given to it understood and strictly limited. 

5. The teachers take their classes. And now if 
through their negligence any classes are still unprovided for, 
the superintendent must find substitutes or combine classes. 
This is a hard duty, unless there is a substitute class or corps. 
For it he needs great persuasiveness and greater patience, for 
few are willing to teach unless they have made special prepa- 
ration, and fewer still are competent. If he can provide for 
this, he will do well. 

During the hour of teaching the classes should be un- 
disturbed. The superintendent should not interrupt them 
and he should protect them from interruption by secretary, 
librarians, or visitors. The teaching is the main purpose of the 
school, that all may be brought into contact with the Word of 
God and that the truth may shine into their hearts. Give the 
teacher a good chance to do his work. Keep everybody away 
from him. If your teachers cannot be trusted to make the 
best use of this half hour, try to get better ones, or make 
better ones of these. Perhaps some teacher will call upon the 



84 The Model Sunday-school. 

superintendent to answer some hard question, or to illustrate 
some point of the lesson. He should be ready for this, having 
made careful study of the lesson and its surroundings ; and he 
should be able to do it in a way to encourage the teacher and 
not to reprove him before his class. 

If his school is large, he ought not to take a class. He 
will have enough to do to superintend, and what time is not 
engaged in active superintendence can be profitably spent in 
studying the classes. If his school has various departments, 
he should look in upon them all, in such way and at such time 
as not to disturb them, but so as to see if in any way he can 
assist. 

When the teaching half hour is over, a simple preliminary 
signal having been given as notice that in three or five minutes' 
time that work must cease, with a single bell tap, or without it, 
the superintendent should claim the attention of the school. 
That this may be prompt and general he needs the assistance 
of every teacher and scholar. 

The closing services should be simple, and nothing should 
be introduced which can interfere with the impression produced 
by the lesson. If possible, have a brief review and sum- 
ming up — that is, have it if there is anybody who can do it 
effectively. In the best schools there is much poor or imper- 
fect teaching ; such an exercise makes it certain that every 
scholar will get the main facts of the lesson and the leading 
truth. 

A lesson hymn and the Lord's Prayer or a benediction and 
response, and then as quiet a dismissal as possible closes 
the hour. Sometimes to insure order it is best to have the 
classes file out as each is called or to let the girls go first 
and then the boys, or the other way. A decorous departure 
should be insisted on, or better, should be secured by wise 
management. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Tl?<? Supday-setyool Jeaetyer. 

I. THE TEACHER'S QUALIFICATIONS. 

The teacher is the immediate agent by means of whom the 
Sunday-school is to accomplish its purpose with the scholar. 
As that purpose is to lead each one into and in an intelligent 
Christian life, the teacher should be fitted to be a spiritual 
guide and leader. This purpose may be accomplished partly by 
personal influence and partly by instruction. The first 
is quite as important as the second. Character is to a degree 
contagious. We grow like those with whom we associate and 
whom we respect in our association with them. A teacher has 
influence by what he is as well as by what he says. The 
teacher, then, should be what it is the aim of the school to make 
the scholar, an intelligent Christian. It is impossible to secure 
the best results where this is not the case. No one can ac- 
complish much by saying " Go " ; the effective word is " Come." 

A Sunday-school teacher should love God our Father and 
Jesus Christ our Saviour, and should show his love not simply 
by obeying but by keeping his commandments. They should 
be precious to him as guarded treasures. 

He should love the Bible : not in an emotional way if 
that were possible ; he should have a love that leads him to 
it, that compels him to read and study it, that makes him eager 
to tell to other people the good things he has found there. 

He should love those whom he teaches, and should 

85 



86 The Model Sunday-school. 

make that clear by the pains he is willing to take to help them 
on in Christian knowledge and life. 

This love for God, his Word and his children should lie 
back of all other qualifications. With these he will be useful, 
however meager his other gifts ; without these he will be of 
little value, whatever external accomplishments he may possess. 

For the other means of influence, namely, instruction, he 
must be " apt to teach." The ability to impart knowledge to 
others is quite different from the possession of information. 
The one who knows most is by no means always the one who 
can excite the most interest or communicate the most instruc- 
tion. What does aptness to teach imply? 

There is a radical difference between preaching or 
lecturing and teaching a class. It is not that those are less 
teaching than this, for the pulpit should be the great chair of 
instruction and the pastor should be the teacher. The differ- 
ence is in the method of teaching. The teacher's method is 
by question and answer, by comparison of views, by testing 
the information acquired all the way on. It involves a more 
active state of mind than merely listening, for there must be 
a responding, too. It involves a more clear insight into the 
needs of those taught ; for they are constantly disclosing these 
by their replies, and so it involves a more definite application 
of the truth as a necessary consequence, if the opportunity be 
improved. 

II. THE TEACHER'S PREPARATION. 

In all this he should be prayerful. He is to teach 
God's truth. For it he needs the aid of the Holy Spirit to 
illuminate his own mind and enable him to see the things of 
Christ. If this aid is earnestly sought, it will never be withheld. 

i. General Preparation of the Lesson. The teacher 
should begin his preparation early, certainly not later 



The Sunday-school Teacher. 87 

than a week before he is to teach the lesson. He should know 
enough about it earlier than that to lay out some definite work 
for each pupil to do in preparing it. 

All truth which we acquire needs time to be digested, to be 
assimilated, to become part of ourselves, before we try to teach 
it to others. A little time corrects the crudity of our views, 
gathers illustration around them, and makes us master of them 
as we cannot be in any other way. Saturday night is by no 
means soon enough to begin the preparation. 

He should become thoroughly familiar with the 
Scripture to be taught. This should be in the first place 
studied without reference to teaching it. He should study it 
first of all for his own instruction and use. He should read it 
through to get its general sweep and impression ; not once but 
several times, until he has become familiar with it as a whole. 
Then he should read the surroundings and especially the pre- 
ceding text. He should get a clear idea of the connection of 
this lesson with that which has preceded it. He should locate 
it in its proper place in the history of Israel, or in the life of 
Christ, or of the early Church, as the case may be. 

To comprehend the lesson in its application and use, he 
should have some general knowledge of the particular 
book in which it is contained. The special object for which 
the book was written is a key to the understanding of its parts. 
This knowledge is best gained by reading the book as a whole 
several times, but may be reached for use by reference to 
introductions to the Bible, or handbooks, or the helps which are 
contained in teachers' editions of it. 

2. Particular Preparation of the Lesson, sentence 
by sentence, should follow this. Make note of any words or 
phrases which are not clear in their*meaning, and get all the 
light you can on them. Try first to think them out, then refer 
to their use in other parts of Scripture ; use your dictionary, 



88 The Model Sunday-school. 

and last of all seek light in commentaries and lesson helps. 
These last are important, and ought not to be neglected, after 
you have worked without them. They are of greatest value 
to correct your views, not to supply you with .ready-made pic- 
tures. Study the persons named, locate on the map the places 
mentioned, get each incident clearly in your mind, and espe- 
cially let the truths which it most evidently teaches impress 
themselves upon you. 

You have studied thus far for your own sake. Now, with 
this store of information and thought it is time to begin to 
think of those you are to teach. 

3. Preparation for the Class comes next. Call up 
before yourselves the persons you are to teach. How old are 
they ? What do they know ? In what kind of study are they 
most interested ? Are they Christians or not ? What methods 
of teaching have you found most successful in the past? 

And now, set them over against each other — this lesson of 
which you are full, this class in which you are deeply interested ; 
how can you best use this for their good ? 

You can now make your plan, or adopt a plan which you 
have found. You will use whichever will best serve your pur- 
pose. By your familiarity with the text, its cleavage lines have 
probably met your eye ; you have seen its natural divisions. 
Each of these has a central idea. Your teaching is to lead 
your pupils to discover that idea for themselves. You are to 
lead them to it ; but you will, if it is possible, give them the 
delight of the discovery. 

Plan your questions so as to lead up to this. These 
should be carefully thought out and prepared, at least in the 
direction they are to take and the ground they are to cover. 
Until you can form questions which will bring out the main 
truths of the lesson, use those which have been prepared by 
others, who are skilled in such work. The appearance of 



The Sunday-school Teacher. 89 

independence and spontaneity in your class is nothing com- 
pared to thoroughness in your teaching. When one has studied 
well, it does no harm to use the questions printed in the helps ; 
it is only when these questions are used to save study, and 
without it, that they do harm. Probably in such cases the les- 
sons would be even duller and less interesting if they were not 
read from the book. 

Plan your illustrations. If the questions are the frame 
of your house, the illustrations are the windows. They are to 
let in the light. All people, old and young, are interested in 
incidents and stories. They remember them longer and more 
vividly than they do or can abstract statements. Keep your 
eye and ear open for incidents in human life, or facts in natural 
history which will make clear the truths you are trying to teach. 
Do not drag in stories for the sake of being interesting, any 
more than you would cut windows into your house where they 
were not needed ; but be sure there are no dark rooms. 

Plan your applications. Let them be legitimate, grow- 
ing out of the lesson, not forced upon it — so far as possible 
the very truths which the lesson was meant by the Holy Spirit 
to teach. A thorough familiarity with a lesson will bring the 
main teaching to its proper place ; so that each lesson will have 
a character of its own, and will not be a mere repetition of a 
few surface truths. Do not always take the easiest and most 
general applications of the lesson. Not every lesson teaches 
the way of conversion. Some teach humility, and some manli- 
ness ; some patience, and some the time to be angry ; some 
liberality, and some thrift. The gospel is good for this life as 
well as for the next. Get the whole round of the teaching as 
far as it legitimately comes out of the lesson. 

Let the applications be in the way of suggestion rather than 
of exhortation. Repeated exhortation loses its force and 
becomes wearisome, as suggestion does not. If possible, get 



90 The Model Sunday-school. 

the pupils to point their own arrows, that is, to make the 
application themselves ; then with a few well-chosen words 
enforce it. 

Do not get into ruts either of study, method, or application. 
Plan for new and varied ways of approach to the lesson, and 
for new ways of dealing with your class. 

In brief, the teacher must know what he is going to teach, 
whom he is going to teach, and how he is going to teach. 
Without a definite aim he will be like one taking his class into 
a boat to paddle around for an hour aimlessly. With it he sets 
out with steady oar for some definite point. As some one has 
wisely said, " Plan your work and work your plan." 

The more the teacher is saturated with his lesson the 
better. If it has gotten possession of him first, it may through 
him take hold of his class. His interest will be contagious. If 
he comes to it without deep interest, his class will do so too. 
If he is full of information, they will be glad to draw from 
it. If he is enthusiastic, they may, they probably will, in time, 
catch something of his enthusiasm. 

III. THE TEACHER TEACHING. 

i. A good teacher will try to excite an interest in the 
study and an appetite for the truth. First, attention must 
be secured, which in its beginnings is a mere stopping to 
listen, and in its end a stretching out toward the thing heard, 
as the derivation of the word suggests. This second amounts 
to interest or appetite. Mental food is of very little value 
without it. This is an easy thing to suggest, but the matter is 
of pr4me importance in teaching. Without it you can ac- 
complish practically nothing. With this gained, an eager 
listening, a desire to know, the clay is in the hands of the 
artist ready to be molded. Some suggestions will be given 
later as to the means which may be used for this end. 



The Sunday-school Teacher, 91 

To accomplish this, 

(r) Confidence must be won. The pupil must come 
to regard the teacher as a friend who desires to help rather 
than as a critic or a judge. Question on familiar things. 
Get the pupil accustomed to the sound of his own voice. I 
have heard a class of children broken in to answering by being 
made to count aloud first. 

A great deal may be said on the art of questioning. The 
main thing is that the questions must be definite. The 
teacher should know what the exact answer should be, and 
the question should be so framed that only one reply should 
cover it. Such general questions as, Who was Moses ? should 
be avoided, for it might be answered, Moses was a man, or a 
prophet, or a lawgiver, or any other of a hundred things. On 
the other hand, questions should not be leading. Avoid 
questions which contain or suggest the answer without thought 
on the part of the pupil; except where in the case of the 
young or timid they are necessary to secure any response. 

Ask no tricky questions. Don't try to catch your 
scholars, at least until such relations are established between 
you and them that they can bear it. Sometimes such a question 
arouses attention more than anything else ; but it must be only 
where confidence is already established. 

There is an advantage in using, or at least in not disregard- 
ing, the questions in the lesson helps which the scholars 
use at home in this, that if you ask these questions they can 
prepare on ihem and know that you will see that they have 
made that preparation by their answers to the questions they 
have studied. They are discouraged from studying at home if 
they work in one line and you examine them altogether in 
another. 

Encourage all answers to your questions, however in- 
complete or wide of the mark they may be, if they are honestly 



92 The Model Sunday-school. 

and seriously made. Do not laugh at them, or let others. 
Recognize some truth in them, and suggest a completer truth 
and a better form for it. Begin your correction of the answer 
with " Yes " and not with " No." Get the pupil to respect his 
own mind, to trust to his own thinking, or at least to his own 
power to understand God's Word ; otherwise you will never 
make a Bible student of him. 

Judicious questioning of course tests preparation, but its 
main object is to stimulate thought and bring the truth into 
clear statement. 

(2) To awaken curiosity is the next thing; that is, 
" a disposition to inquire, investigate, or seek after knowledge." 
This is stirred by showing the pupil that you know something 
worth knowing which he does not, or that there is something 
which may be clear to you both which neither of you have 
acquired. Show the corner of what you would have him eager 
to learn. Lift the curtain just a little, that he may get a hint 
of what is behind it. Get him to question you, and you have 
made a great advance. Do not tell him all you know r even 
then, but suggest ways in which he can find out. Curiosity is 
natural to the human mind ; it is only a vice when wrongly 
directed. Turned toward things which it is desirable to know, 
it is a quality to be desired. When Zacchaeus " wanted to see 
Jesus, who he was," he had come to the beginning of all which 
followed to him. 

Now you have brought your pupils' minds into an active 
state. They are no longer merely receptive, mere sponges to 
absorb what you give out. The next step is to 

(3) Guide their thought and study. It is good to 
awaken their interest and desire to know when they are with 
you in the class ; it is far better to make this a permanent 
motive when they are away from you. 

How to secure study by the class. This is one of 



The Sunday-school Teacher. 93 

the most difficult problems to be solved, and one which 
troubles more teachers perhaps than any other. The teacher 
must study himself, of course ; the class cannot be ex- 
pected to study unless they see that the teacher does. They 
must see that the teacher knows more than they do and has 
made wider study than they can. 

He must expect them to prepare, and they must see 
that he arranges for it. They must be always questioned with 
the presupposition that they have done some faithful work at 
home. If they have Quarterlies or lesson papers to aid them 
in the home study, the teacher should examine them along the 
lines laid down for them in these. This recognizes their prep- 
aration and gives them the opportunity to show it. Such 
recognition of work done is an essential stimulus. 

They should also be given special topics to study up in 
advance for each lesson. Simple ones, of course, for the 
younger, and more difficult for those further on. Select the 
subject for each one which will be most likely to interest him. 
Use the Lesson Themes and Seek-further Questions, if you use 
the Pilgrim Quarterlies. These cannot be answered properly 
without previous study. Give each one something to do, and 
give all some things to do in common. Cut out work for them 
if you want them to do it. How much home study would the 
public school teacher secure from the pupils without some such 
expedients? The best teachers are using them more and more 
in our day-schools. 

Persuade them especially to study and read the connection 
between the lessons and the intervening history ; always 
examine on this and make it clear. 

If you can do it in any way, get them to follow the schedule 
of Lesson Work for the Week, so doing something each 
day in preparation for the class. This will probably secure the 
best results of all. If you try to secure such study as this from 



94 The Model Sunday-school. 

your class, you must be able to assure them and to show to 
them that you do it yourself. 

In all teaching, questions from the class should be 
invited and freely welcomed. Anything is good that will 
secure their mental activity during the hour of teaching. It 
will then be an hour of learning too. 

More than one course of lesson helps now provides Home 
Study Slips, on which questions are asked with a place for 
written answers. These are to be filled out at home and 
brought to the class. A comparison of the answers written, 
with kindly criticism and suggestion, may be a great aid in 
stimulating thorough study and preparation of the lessons. 
The same remark holds true of the written quarterly examina- 
tion papers. 

2. The teacher must have fresh information to 
impart. He is a teacher first, not a preacher, and if he were 
the latter, a basis of new or fresh facts is often the best founda- 
tion for his after exhortations. How shall he get fresh informa- 
tion ? The Bible is an old book ; its facts are familiar. We 
answer, There are always fresh facts to be learned or a fresh 
putting of old facts as a result of fresh study. Never trust 
to your previous knowledge in teaching a class. However 
experienced you may be, you will not interest your class or do 
justice to your lesson unless you have made recent and special 
preparation for your teaching. And if you study, and especially 
if you study the Bible itself and not merely commentaries or 
books about the Bible, or lesson helps which are other people's 
opinions about the Bible, you will almost always be able to 
come to your class with the feeling that you have something 
new and fresh to give them. It may be a very old truth which 
you have come to, but it is yours now because you have found 
it for yourself, and you will come to your class with the 
eagerness of discovery and the eagerness of desire to tell of it. 



The Sunday-school Teacher. 95 

What one has read as the result of other people's discoveries 
may be interesting or not ; but what he tells as the result of his 
own exploration is sure to be so. 

Your own mind must be active : not merely repeating, but 
thinking. You may think in the old ways as much as you please 
if it is your own thinking. The teacher who ceases to learn 
ceases to do good teaching. 

One who would be ready to teach should have a stock of 
definitions of the most important and constantly recurring 
truths. These should be thought out, studied out, gleaned 
from the best sources, thoroughly comprehended and commit- 
ted to memory. They should be always ready for use, like 
coins of the realm. Such words as faith and love, salvation 
and eternal life, repentance, forgiveness, justification, should 
be clearly understood and consistently taught, and pupils 
drilled in them, as in the scales in their musical education. 
These are the foundation stones on which to build — only the 
teacher must see to it that his definitions are scriptural and true. 
This will give steadiness and consistency to his teaching. 
Without it he is likely to be always fumbling where he ought 
to be sure and firm in his touch. 

3. The teacher is to influence the wills of his 
pupils. This is where he touches and molds their character. 
You may excite attention and impart information to any extent 
and yet leave the springs of character unreached. When one 
says, " I will," and does the thing he wills, he becomes better 
or worse. This decision is not to be affected by much exhor- 
tation : that soon wears out; but by getting the thought 
concentrated on that which attracts to itself. If you 
can so set forth the good men of the Bible, most of all the 
God-man of the Bible, so that they or he seem worthy of imi- 
tation and winning in invitation, you have done your best work. 
The way to avoid the power and influence of evil is to turn 



g6 The Model Sunday-school. 

away from it and not look at it or think about it. The best 
way to come to love and choose the good is by keeping it 
before the mind in its most attractive aspects. The teacher 
who can fill the mind of his scholars with high ideals of the 
Christly life prepares them thus to yield to the leading of the 
Holy Spirit. 

And it is just here that the presence and power of the 
Spirit is most needed to make the truth effective in the heart, 
to bring the will under its power. The teacher can help by 
making the truth as clear as he can, by setting forth Christ as 
the Friend and Saviour we need, but only the Spirit of God 
can renew the heart or even make it willing to be renewed. 
Here the teacher must speak, feeling that he is in the presence 
of God and with continual prayer to him to bless the Word, 
to take these things of Christ and show them to his class, to 
convince them " of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. ,, 

IV. THE TEACHER AS A FRIEND. 

The teacher out of school is no longer the teacher, but the 
friend and companion. His first qualification has been spoken 
of as his love for his pupil as well as for the great Master and 
Teacher. This he cannot put off and on at his convenience. 
If it is genuine, it goes with him and stays with him and is part 
of him. 

The secret of Christian love. Does any one ask 
how he can love any one simply because that one happens to 
be in his class? We suggest that if we are like Christ his love 
will be ours for all with whom we have to do. And this reply 
is true, which is not one based on mere duty but one also of 
experience, that it is easy to love any one whom you try to 
help. Indeed the trying to help proves the love already there. 
You cannot try to help any one without becoming interested 
in him. 



The Sunday-school Teacher. 97 

The teacher then will bear his class upon his mind 
and heart during all the week. He will be planning how 
to interest them when he next meets them. He will see this 
or that thing in his observation or in his reading by which he 
can make the next lesson, or some truth in which they are 
interested, clearer. 

He will want to know his scholars in their sur- 
roundings and in their characters. He will wish to see 
the homes from which they come and to secure the cooper- 
ation of their parents, or to cooperate with them if they are 
already seeking the best good of their children. He will be 
interested in their school, their work, their play, their com- 
panions, their reading. He will desire to enter into their lives 
as he comes to know them, and, as one way to do this, to let 
them enter into his. He will open his home to them together 
and apart. He will aid them if he can in securing places in 
which they can work. If they are in trouble, he will show 
them sympathy. If they are in special temptation, he will try 
to strengthen them for it or to avert it from them. He will 
not be either a pastor or a father, but he will be a loving 
teacher. 

That is what Jesus was to the apostles, and the word 
by which they spoke of him most often was Teacher (though 
it is translated Master in our Bibles). If you can make the 
name yours in some little sense as it was his, and can be worthy 
of it, you will have a title high enough for any ambition. 

We have known some such teachers of the little ones and 
of those older, both men and women, and they have always 
exercised a wonderful influence on those who came under the 
guidance of their instruction and within the circle of their 
affectionate care. 



98 The Model Sunday-school. 

N. THE TEACHER AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE 
SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

Apart from teaching, a good teacher can do much to help 
the general character of the school in its order, its spirit of 
cooperation, and its worship. 

The good teacher will be promptly in his place in the 
school, at least five minutes before the opening. This is the 
time to greet the pupils as they come, to express kindly feelings, 
and by the mere presence to prevent that levity and play which 
in the youngest classes, and sometimes in older ones, is a poor 
preparation for the worship and study which are to come. 
The example of promptness too, as are all other examples, is 
contagious. 

Let the teacher come to order instantly on the first 
signal from the superintendent, and then secure the order of 
the class. The superintendent has been appointed to his 
place by competent authority ; he needs and has a claim to 
attention when he asks for it. Teachers are thoughtless here 
sometimes, and do not sufficiently realize that- they have 
enlisted under this captain and should never, even in the least 
things, set an example of insubordination. 

The teacher should also actively participate in all the 
general exercises of the school ; should rise promptly when it 
is called on to rise ; should join in the readings, in the repeti- 
tion of the Lord's Prayer, in the singing if possible, and should 
encourage all the class to participate heartily in all these serv- 
ices, as well as in answering questions which are asked of the 
whole school. 

He should never find fault with the management of 
the school in the presence of his class, but sustain it loyally, 
giving to the superintendent in a kindly way any suggestion 
which he thinks may be for the benefit of the school. He 



The Sunday-school Teacher. 99 

should report cases of need to him, and should seek his advice 
in the work of teaching even more than he gives it for the work 
of superintending. 

He should recognize the superintendent, too, in declining 
to receive a new scholar or transfer one from or to an- 
other class without his authorization ; should notify him of any 
removals, and should assume both that he is interested in all 
that concerns the class, and that he is a superior officer in the 
school. This will do much to support his authority and to 
maintain discipline and good order. 

In the same kindly way he will inform the librarian if he 
discovers any books among those circulated in the school which 
are for any reason objectionable, and will suggest to him or 
to the library committee any which are especially desirable for 
the library. 

If compelled to be absent from the class, he should, if possi- 
ble, provide a substitute teacher ; if he cannot do this, 
he should always notify the superintendent, and that, as long 
before the time of the school session as practicable. 

He should attend all meetings of teachers or others, 
called in the interests of the school, and show by his prompt- 
ness in coming that he regards these interests as second to none. 

The good teacher should carefully watch the attendance 
of his class. He should secure promptness by every means 
in his power. He should take notice of every absence, 
so that the pupil will know that if away he will be missed. 
Often the best way to do this is to assume that the pupil must 
be sick, and call to inquire for him at once. If the call can- 
not be made, at least write a note to the absent one. If the 
teacher is unable to be present, he should send word by his 
substitute or write to the class, explaining his absence, and 
if he encloses his regular contribution, it will emphasize his 
regret, and enable him to take some part even though away. 



LOO The Model Sunday-scliool. 

, If any of his class leave the school, he should know 
the reason, and where they are going to be taught. Often by 
correspondence those who have been formerly members of the 
class can be reached and helped into or in a Christian life, 
even more than when they and their teachers were in frequent 
personal communication. Any unusual expression of interest 
will be especially noticed and felt. 

In taking a new class, not only greet those who attend, 
but study carefully the whole roll of the class, and if any have 
recently withdrawn, especially since the loss of the last regular 
teacher, give them a special invitation to return, by note if not 
otherwise. 

Refractory scholars are sometimes found in the Sunday- 
school. They cannot be dealt with as in the public or private 
day-school. The worse they are, the more they need the 
Sunday-school and its influences. Be patient with them. 
Pray for them. Be kind to them. Try to win their confi- 
dence and love. Often a rough boy will do much better with 
a good woman as a teacher than with a man; his sense of 
chivalry will check him. If you can get such a scholar to 
help, to do some little service, you may often win him to 
your side. Give him your book, and ask him to mark^ the 
attendance for you. Consult* him about some difficulty which 
does not concern him. Assure him that you know he does not 
mean to trouble you, and appeal to him to be thoughtful for 
you and for the class, if you must speak to him directly about 
his behavior. If after all patience and prayer and manage- 
ment, he disturbs the class and school, try again several times, 
and only as a very last and unavoidable measure, expel him. 
And even then go after him and try to win him back. 

Of course the good teacher will be thoroughly loyal to his 
church. He will try to secure the attendance of his scholars 
at its regular services of worship and at all gatherings where 



The Sunday-school Teacher. ioi 

they may get good. He may do this by asking for the morn- 
ing text, providing them with text-books, telling them of the 
interesting things that occur, inviting them to sit with him 
now and then, or offering to sit with them. If he sees the 
benefit of this habit to them, he will find some way, if not to 
secure the end, at least to show his interest in it. 

VI. TRAINING TEACHERS. 

A teacher ought at some time in some way to have the 
benefit of a normal class training. This makes the ground- 
work for all his personal study, furnishes the general infor- 
mation which ought to be the background of each lesson, and 
suggests methods of teaching and, to a considerable extent, 
the contents of the teaching too. 

The teachers' meeting comes after all this, and is a good 
place to bring the questions which have arisen, but the answers 
to which have not been made clear by private study. This 
meeting must have to do mainly with the what to teach and 
not with the whom or how. 

Natural teachers. Many a teacher who has known 
nothing of the laws of teaching has yet done excellent and 
effective work, but it has been probably because, without 
learning it from other teachers, or even distinctly reasoning it 
out for himself, he has come by the impulse of his own earnest 
desire and by the criticism of his own experience to teach 
in accordance with the to him unknown laws of the human 
mind. It is fortunate that one may often do a thing in a right 
way without being able to explain how or why it is right. 
Practical knowledge is quite different from scientific knowl- 
edge. The theory may help those who are not what is called 
natural teachers ; it may enable those who have gifts in this 
direction to develop them more rapidly. The process of our 



102 The Model Sunday-school. 

own experience is slow; we may learn more rapidly, if less 
thoroughly, by the experience of others, which, reduced by 
observation to principles, furnishes scientific knowledge. 

Three ways to fail in teaching* " Poor teaching 
generally misses the mark in one of three ways : — (i) Either 
the teacher does so much of the work that the scholar remains 
relatively passive ; or (2) the teacher aims to cover too much 
ground, and so fails to bring out any one thing with clearness 
and force; or else (3) the teacher fails to connect the subject 
taught with the actual problems existing in the scholar's mind, 
and so fails to awaken his interest. The wise teacher will offer 
nothing himself which by any device he can draw out of a 
scholar. He will recognize that the average scholar can grasp 
at most but two or three new ideas in the course of a half- 
hour. And he must contrive to present ideas concerning 
which the scholar brings to the class a fair amount of curiosity 
and conscious ignorance. Any method of teaching which 
fulfills these three conditions is good and will succeed. Any 
method which neglects any one of these conditions is bad, 
and is sure to fail." l 

Teachers more than systems. Much has been said 
about systems of lessons and plans for study. They are of 
great importance ; but the most important thing by far con- 
nected with a school is the character and work of the teacher. 
The great need is better teachers, with a higher and more 
spiritual ideal and with a better and more thorough prepara- 
tion for the work. A good teacher will instruct with a bad 
system or with a good one, with a text-book or without any. 
We have the best text-book and constantly improving helps. 
We need the best of teachers, and they are constantly growing 
better. 

1 President W. DeW. Hyde, d.d., of Bowdoin College. 



The Sunday-school Teacher. 103 

VII. HINDRANCES A3IONG TEACHERS. 

i. The unconverted teachers, whether members of the 
church or not, can never properly accomplish the purpose of 
the Sunday-school. They may be fitted intellectually and may 
be excellent in imparting information in regard to all the 
external facts of the lesson, but are altogether unfit for making 
the spiritual impression which ought to be made. They cannot 
lead and are not likely to point their scholars to the Saviour. 
In some schools there may be no others to take their places. 
The call to them then is not to leave their classes, but to become 
Christians themselves that they may lead their scholars with 
them to Christ. 

2. The impersonal teachers, who, though Christians, 
never talk personally and privately with their scholars about 
the Christian life. This diffidence or self-distrust should be 
overcome by prayer, by the sense of responsibility, by an ap- 
preciation of the importance of their mission, by honest effort 
to do their full duty. After one has prayed earnestly for 
another it is far easier to try to help him. 

3. The unexpectant teachers, who do not expect their 
scholars to be converted. There are many Christians yet who 
have little faith in child Christians, who neither recognize child 
piety when they see it nor expect it to be attained. Of course 
they cannot work for what they do not hope for. They do not 
read the text, " Train up a child in the way he should go, and 
when he is old he will not depart from it," but change it thus : 
" Train up a child for the way he should go, and when he is 
old he may get into it." 

4. The ignorant teachers. By this is meant those who 
have never been instructed in general Bible knowledge and 
truth, or who have never taken pains to acquire it. A teacher 
should know more than is required to teach a given lesson ; 



104 The Model Sunday-schooL 

he should know all around it ; he should have general infor- 
mation on themes connected with his teaching. He must be 
ahead of his scholars in Bible knowledge or they will come to 
despise him as a teacher. Fortunately ignorance can always 
be overcome by effort. 

5. The entertaining teacher. Sometimes for the sake 
of securing attention or of attaining popularity with the 
scholars a teacher will forget or neglect the real purpose of the 
school, and set out to make the class have an interesting time 
without regard to teaching the lesson or keeping them in 
touch with the rest of the school. The aim may be reached 
temporarily, but not for long. All such efforts after a while pall 
and are relaxed and meanwhile a whole class is demoralized. 
It is like giving candy to children until they have no appetite 
for solid and healthful food. Such entertainers are perhaps 
the most harmful substitutes for teachers ; it would evidently 
not be proper to call them teachers in any sense. 

6. The disorderly teachers, who do not promptly regard 
the superintendent's call for attention, who do not partici- 
pate in all the services, who trifle when they should be serious, 
cast contempt on all the efforts of their chosen leader and 
hinder far more than they can help the school. If these things 
have seemed slight irregularities to any, let them remember 
that they are serious interferences with the good name, the 
good order, and the good work of the school. 

7. The unprepared teachers. It seems inexcusable that 
any should take upon themselves the responsibility of teach- 
ing, and especially of teaching religious truth, and deliberately 
neglect to prepare themselves to do it. A little time every 
day would enable them to do it well, but a hurried glancing at 
the lesson just before going into the class is no proper prepa- 
ration to teach. A class can be held better and more easily 
by good teaching than in any other way : no expedients can 



The Sunday-school Teacher. 105 

make up for its loss. Teachers who are too indifferent to 
prepare as thoroughly as they can for each lesson are little 
help and often a great hindrance. Hundreds of grown boys 
and girls leave Sunday-school every year on this account. 
They are used to good teaching in the day-school and they 
know it or its absence. If the teacher does not respect them 
enough to prepare, they will not respect the teacher enough to 
attend. 

8. The irregular teachers. One of the greatest trials of 
a superintendent is to have teachers who are irregular in their 
attendance or otherwise indifferent to their responsibilities. 
Of course unless he can supply their place with those who will 
do better he must make the best of it, and try to make them 
better. He can use all means except scolding to make them 
realize the importance of hearty cooperation. If all such 
means fail, and he can fill their places with more faithful 
teachers, he should in some kind but firm way secure the 
accomplishment of the change, in justice to the class. For an 
irregular or indifferent teacher can never have a regular and 
interested class ; if it has been all this, it will surely degenerate 
to at least the teacher's level and more often below it. Those 
who persist in coming late or remaining away on any slight 
pretext should reform or resign. No school or class can 
succeed with such a leader. 

9. The dressy teacher. Dress is sometimes a hindrance 
to the teachers best work. The dress proper to be worn into 
the Lord's house or in the Lord's work should be neat but 
not showy. A display of fine clothes suggests the Pharisee 
rather than the publican at his prayers. If conspicuous jewelry 
and noticeably fine clothes are anywhere appropriate for 
Christians, surely it is not where they are trying to be interpre- 
ters of God's Word to others. They might come across some 
inconvenient texts at such a time. The dress should show 



106 The Model Sunday-school. 

respect for the place ; it should never suggest or promote self- 
consciousness. It is true that the poor may like to see fine 
clothes, but the contrast with their own in the public service 
can hardly be helpful to them. 



CHAPTER X. 

In order that the superintendent and teachers may work in 
harmony, it is necessary that they should meet from time to 
time for consultation. There are three possible objects in 
view in such a meeting which may be kept separate or com- 
bined in any proportions deemed expedient : devotion, study, 
business. 

i. The Meeting for Devotion. In any meeting of 
those engaged in teaching God's Word this first element should 
not be wanting. A brief business meeting even should always 
be opened with prayer for divine guidance in the things about 
to be decided or done. Occasionally a purely devotional 
meeting should be held, in which only the spiritual interests 
of the school should be considered and reported on from the 
various classes, with much prayer for that Spirit who alone can 
make the teachings of Christ plain and persuasive. A meeting 
of this kind can hardly fail to be felt in the higher aims and 
deeper earnestness of teachers ; they can seldom go from its 
atmosphere without more impressive views of their duties and 
opportunities and renewed resolves to be faithful to their trust. 
Often suggestions are made which are of great aid in reaching 
scholars, or information imparted which the superintendent 
or pastor may follow up with the best results \ discouraged 
teachers may receive new impulses of hope, careless ones may 
be made more zealous, and those whose zeal is greater than 
their knowledge may have it wisely directed. There is an 



108 The Model Sunday-school. 

influence upon the school in knowing that its work is prayed 
over and only entered upon after special consecration and 
petition. 

The spiritual work of the school should be the frequent topic 
of prayer at the prayer-meeting of the church. Certainly once 
in three months is not too often for such a service to be held. 
But apart from this it is important that those actively engaged 
in it should meet more often to pray over their work. 

Regular or Occasional. A meeting weekly for not over 
fifteen minutes, a little before the opening of the school, has 
been found useful in some cases : though the fact that both 
superintendent and teachers ought to be in their places ready 
to welcome their scholars raises a question whether this is the 
best time. Others have held this meeting at the close of the 
school, and have found it profitable to invite such of their 
classes as were Christians, and especially those who were 
thoughtful, to attend it with them. Certainly there are times 
when such a meeting should be held — at the beginning of the 
year or of the season when the largest spiritual results are 
looked for, and on days especially set apart for Sunday-school 
objects. 

The reasons for holding such meetings for prayer 
are evident : — 

(i) The need of the Holy Spirit in teaching the Word 
of God. 

(2) The practical aim of all the work of the Sunday- 
school. 

(3) The promise to united prayer. The oneness of 
purpose of all who attend gives especial value and power to 
such gatherings. 

(4) The help which often comes from them to the dis- 
couraged teacher. 

(5) The effect upon the spirituality of the teaching. 



The Teachers Meeting. 109 

The deepening of the sense of responsibility on the part of 
teachers not fully alive to it. 

(6) The provision of a place to which to invite schol- 
ars who are peculiarly thoughtful or serious. 

(7) The effect on the scholars to know that their teach- 
ers meet to pray over their work. 

These are surely sufficient and sufficiently weighty reasons 
why such gatherings should be held at least occasionally. 

2. The Meeting for Study of the lesson is that to which 
this special name was formerly applied almost uniformly. 
There can be no doubt but that such regular weekly meetings 
are much less common than they used to be. The fuller helps 
which are provided for the teacher probably have made them 
seem less necessary. The multiplicity of other engagements 
has helped to drive them out. In the cities the tendency has 
been to merge the teachers of the individual schools into one 
or more large classes taught by men of special ability for this 
service. 

And yet there can be no question of the advantage of a 
teachers' meeting for study connected with each school, if it 
be properly conducted. This it will be, if it has a leader who 
can keep it from the peril of all adult classes, — becoming a 
debating club, — and who can guide it wisely and firmly. This 
it will be if it be not used as a place for the original study or 
pj-eparation of the lesson, but for the comparison of results, 
for the clearing of difficulties, for supplementing deficiencies, 
and especially for learning better methods of teaching. Part 
of the hour may well be given to some normal work on those 
general topics which form a foundation for all good building 
in the realms both of Bible knowledge and of the principles of 
teaching. 

A superintendent or pastor who desires to know what is 
being taught and to have some shaping control of it will do 
v/ell to secure and supervise such a meeting. 



1 10 The Model Sunday-school. 

3. The Business Meetings of the teachers should be 
brief and not too frequent. Occasionally a superintendent is 
disposed to magnify this part of the school and to bring before 
his teachers unnecessary details for discussion. But the school 
is not a business concern and it should not be too much con- 
cerned with business. Let this be confined to what is neces- 
sary and to matters on which such consultation may be help- 
ful. It tends to obscure the main end for which the school 
exists, to make too much of its external conditions. The 
product of the mill is more important than the machinery; 
when that is defective then this should be examined ; but the 
superintendent can study it better than a mass meeting of the 
mill hands. 

4. The Social Meeting of teachers, especially in large 
schools, is often both desirable and delightful. It is of great 
use for those to know each other who are engaged in a com- 
mon work. A simple tea together cements the friendships and 
is one form of Christian communion. Of course this is to be 
united with one or more of the kinds of meetings already 
suggested. 

How often to be held and when. Meetings of these 
four kinds may be held regularly or occasionally. A quarterly 
or monthly meeting for what little business there is to be done, 
and the rest of the hour given to consultation and prayer, is 
always good. Even an occasional meeting for study may be 
a great help, though not so valuable as a weekly gathering. 
The time and place, whether on the Sunday just before or after 
the school session, or in the week, before or after the prayer- 
meeting of the church, or at some special evening and at a 
private house, depend upon the convenience and habits of 
the community. Only let it not be neglected because the 
teacher's work is not thought of sufficient importance to justify 
the use of the required time. 



CHAPTER XL 

I^evieu/s. 

Their necessity. There is comparatively little value in 
teaching without reviewing. Repetition is necessary to remem- 
brance. Impressions once made by even the best of teaching 
fade rapidly ; they must be renewed over and over again. Facts 
and truths once learned must be looked at again and again 
until they are like familiar faces, which we expect to see fre- 
quently and recognize in any crowd. The review is " the 
finishing and fastening " process. 

i. Review of facts is repetition. The mere going 
over again of the trodden path makes the objects which line it 
plain. There is virtue in mere repetition. That is the pro- 
cess of ki committing to memory." That is the way to learn 
the books of the Bible in their order, the classes into which 
they are divided, the names and dates and events which give 
us the measuring points and lines for its history. A constant 
drill in these is good for all, especially for children. They 
learn rapidly in this way. They forget as rapidly without it. 
The process may be varied so as to excite and maintain 
interest. Repeating singly, as a whole, in sections, alternately, 
or continuously, can be made a bright and pleasant exercise. 
Definitions of fundamental truths should be constantly re- 
peated in the same form, that they may be a sure and usable 
possession. These should be called up frequently in the course 
of instruction, and so kept fresh. 

Review of truths and teachings is more than 



112 The Model Sunday-school. 

repetition. It is viewing again that at which we have 
gazed before, but it is or should be from a different standpoint. 
A review should be a new view of old truths. They should 
be evidently the same, and yet they should be seen in a new 
connection or a new light so as to have some charm of novelty 
about them. 

2. With this distinction in mind, how may the weekly 
reviews be conducted? 

(i) They should be constant. An annual or even quar- 
terly review is of very little use unless it has been prepared for by 
weekly reviews. One may learn a review lesson for a quarterly 
exercise, but it is a great task, and is so far a new lesson that 
the benefit which comes from frequently going over the same 
ground is lost. The object of the exercise is lost, and largely 
the pleasure of it too. The quarterly review should be the 
great field day of the school, the dress parade, the exhibition 
of that which has been learned during the preceding weeks, 
the final fixing in the memory of the Scripture which has been 
studied, and of its teachings. 

(2) They should be Scriptural. They should impress 
the words of Scripture. The Golden Texts in every school 
should be called for by the superintendent, and those for the 
previous Sundays of the quarter should all be gone over at every 
session. If you notice where this is done, the texts of the early 
Sundays come to be well known and well recited, and as the 
advance is made to the later Sundays the voices are fewer 
and more uncertain, because the repetitions have been fewer. 
Perhaps the only way to make up for this would be in every 
case to go back twelve lessons, even though half or more of 
the texts belonged to the previous quarter. This would insure 
an equal opportunity to become familiar with them. In these 
days when the art of memorizing is made less of than formerly, 
it is not a little thing to fix one important text in the memory 



Reviews. 113 

for each Sunday of the year. This can be accomplished by 
any superintendent, however lacking in gift for teaching. It 
is simple drill. Put the first word or two on the blackboard 
if necessary, but rather get the texts associated with the topics 
of the lessons and with the truths taught. 

(3) They should be topical. The titles of the les- 
sons are of very little value to be learned. The topics are 
important because they contain the truth of the lesson, and in 
some helps (as the Pilgrim series) they are especially studied 
in their form with reference to their use in reviewing. 

(4) They should be for the whole school. This 
should be done by the superintendent as a general exercise. 
Every teacher should take part in it, and if possible secure the 
participation of each scholar. If for any reason it is not done 
for the whole school, the teacher should see that it is not neg- 
lected in the class. 

3. The Quarterly Review should be carefully arranged 
for and conducted. The weekly review of texts, facts, and 
teachings should have reference to this, which should be the 
keystone of the arch to make all sure and strong. It should : — 

(1) Secure and test the memory of the Golden Texts. 

(2) Make plain the period covered by the lessons 
reviewed. This of course should be done in the preview 
and in the weekly study. 

(3) Bring to light the main facts, though this should 
be done briefly. 

(4) Emphasize the most important spiritual teach- 
ings. 

Various methods. There are many ways of conducting 
such a review : — 

(a) One is to construct a new lesson out of the united 
lessons of che quarter, with the blackboard to help ; and as 
the result to show the one greatest truth they teach or to 
deepen the impression they together make. 



114 The Model Sunday-school, 

(&) Classify the people named in the lessons, and show 
their relation to the kingdom of God. 

(e) Tell briefly the connected story, asking questions 
as you go, to bring out names or facts or teachings, so that the 
school shall help in the reconstruction. 

(d) Distribute questions previously written on slips 
of paper among the scholars. At the review let these ques- 
tions be asked. This may serve to encourage to a more 
thorough and general study. It must be brightly conducted, 
as must any review or any teaching indeed to hold the interest 
of all. 

The secret of an interesting review is first to bring 
out what is familiar in new combinations, and then to bring out 
of that something which is not familiar or expected. 

4. Written reviews are being used more and more widely. 
These are the most thorough of all by far. The question 
papers are to be distributed a week before the Review Sunday 
and filled out at home, from memory if possible ; if not, from 
the Bible. The public review is to be based on them, and 
those successfully passing are to receive a certificate, which 
by seals of four different colors is good for a year. 

The last question has been often made personal, as " Do you 
want to be a Christian?" The answers to these have opened 
the way in many cases for personal conversation, and have led 
to a public confession of Christ. 

A Chicago superintendent gives the following testimony to 
their value : 

" We claim for the review papers : — 

" 1. They excite more interest in the study of the lesson. 

" 2. They prompt home Bible study ; not only by the schol- 
ars, but also by the family. 

" 3. They are brought into many non-church-going families 
by the scholars: the questions are read, and in many cases 



Reviews. 1 1 5 

fathers and mothers become interested in the lessons and thus 
study the Bible. 

" 4. By studying the questions asked, and afterward writing 
the answer, the truths of the lesson are more fully impressed 
upon the mind. 

" 5. By the reviews and answers given, many scholars are led 
to make a public confession of their belief. 

" With us, Review Sunday is the most interesting and helpful 
Sunday-school session we have, always having more than an 
average attendance." 



CHAPTER XII. 

$iiT)<iay-5Q\)oo\ (Tlusie. 

Its object. The use of music in the Sunday-school as in 
the church, in theory at least, is for the expression or for the 
impression of Christian sentiments. It is not intended to 
teach truth, but to stir or voice feeling. It should not, 
therefore, be didactic or doctrinal. It should express the 
emotions which are based on Christian truth, and sometimes, 
perhaps, the purpose to which those awakened feelings lead. 

Its themes. Praise for God's goodness, thanks for his 
care and grace, prayer for his continued guidance, trust in his 
fatherly love, hope based on his gracious promises, consecra- 
tion to his service : these are the themes which must naturally 
find expression in sacred song. 

i. The hymns expressing these feelings should for all uses 
be simple in expression. Indeed the hundred hymns that 
have lived longest and been used by the largest number have 
been so both in thought ' and language. Such hymns as 
" My faith looks up to thee " and " Jesus, lover of my soul " 
have no intricacies of thought or of expression, no elaborate 
figures, and no unusual words. This should be especially true 
of hymns for Sunday-school use. For, while this department 
of the church is not meant for children only, yet it is so largely 
composed of the young that it would be folly to disregard 
them. 

They should be equally simple in sentiment. The 
Sunday-school song collection should include the hymns of 
universal Christian experience like those referred to above. 

116 



Sunday-school Music. 117 

They should be hymns of average, not of the maturest, expe- 
rience. They should not dwell much on earthly trials or on 
heavenly joys, as too many of those used in the past have 
done. These are neither the experiences nor the anticipa- 
tions of youth. They should rather be glad and hopeful and 
concerned largely with the faith and hope and love which mark 
the life of the Christian in this world. They should embody 
not childish but childlike sentiments. They should not be 
strained to a high pitch of feeling, but should be adapted to 
those whose religious feelings, like their experiences, are not 
the deepest. They should be such hymns as we sing at home, 
rather than those that would be appropriate to the revival 
meeting. 

It is well frequently, though not too often, to call attention 
to the sentiment of the hymn ; sometimes to read a hymn 
in alternate verses or in unison with the school. Do not let 
the meaning of the service be forgotten. 

2. The tunes are, or ought to be, the fitting embodiment 
of the hymns. 

(1) They too, then, should be simple and joyous ; but they 
should not be frivolous. They should not suggest a jig or 
a waltz. Music " which stirs the heels more than the heart " 
is out of place in the house of God. If such music has any 
effect, it is in appealing to the physical rather than to the men- 
tal or spiritual nature. It is akin to the hand-rubbing and 
shouting which still attend the religious exercises of some 
uneducated sects. It is exciting long before it is religious, if 
not long after. 

(2) The tunes should aid the words in exciting or ex- 
pressing religious emotion or in deepening those quiet feelings 
of trust and peace which belong to the Christian life. They 
must be born of religious feeling to be able to awaken it. 
There is a middle ground between the old, staid, solemn tunes, 



1 1 8 The Model Sunday-school. 

more fitted to didactic hymns than tg those of emotion, and 
which are, therefore, to be discarded, and the flippant, rollick- 
ing, happy-go-lucky jig music to which too many Sunday- 
schools turn for relief. 

Tunes in marching time are both animated and serious and 
are well adapted to this use. Many English chorals sung with 
animation and in quick time are both dignified and enlivening. 
A Sunday-school should be familiar with the hymns and tunes 
which are oftenest used in the public worship of the church 
and in the singing of the home. They should be used with 
sufficient frequency to insure such familiarity. 

3. The rendering of the hymns and tunes thus united 
should be in the spirit of worship. Those who take part 
should be instructed that the sacrifice of praise is to be as 
reverently offered as that of prayer. They should be led, then, 
with Christian feeling and by one in sympathy with the sen- 
timents expressed. Their attention must be called frequently 
to the words used, so that they will not think only or mainly 
of the melody sung. Every one has felt the difference be- 
tween the singing of some hymn by one whose whole heart 
went into its feeling and one whose voice only uttered the 
words. If such a devout leader cannot be had, at least let 
there be no trifling with this service. 

Practicing and praising. The difference between prac- 
ticing music and singing hymns as worship should be clearly 
drawn. If there is to be, a time for the former, let. it be dis- 
tinctly set forth as such. Let it be understood even in this 
that it is practice as a preparation for praise. When the sing- 
ing as part of the school service begins, let it be clearly part of 
the worship. The melody of the heart is more acceptable to 
God than all possible harmonies of the voice. 

4. Dependence on the chorister. The singing of the 
school, if it is large enough to carry. any music strongly, can be 
made very much what an enthusiastic leader desires. If he 



Sunday-school Music. 119 

believes that the only animated singing is of jig music, of 
course he will drag and drone on anything besides that. If, 
on the other hand, his own musical taste and spiritual 
perception approve heartily of what is more strictly musical 
and devotional, he will impress his feeling upon the school, 
and will lead them not only in the matter of tunes but of taste. 
The better the chorister, the better the singing and the better 
the songs sung. 

A caution. On the other hand it would not be well for 
a leader of refined taste to insist on forcing music on any 
school which was distasteful to it. He must lead them grad- 
ually up. And if they cannot be led far, he may at least keep 
them on the upper levels of the music of their choice. Sac- 
rifice good taste at any time for the higher end of using what 
will both express and impress religious feeling. The end is 
of far more consequence than the means. 

Quite as important as his appreciation of good music is his 
response to the Christian sentiments in the expression of 
which he is leading the school. If these pervade him, they 
will know it ; if these are utterly lacking, he cannot lead them 
where he does not go. 

How to learn a new tune. The melody is far more 
important than the harmony in the singing of a congregation. 
If a school would all unite in singing the melody, that is, the 
air, of a new tune, and continue to do so until it had become 
perfectly familiar to them, there would not be so much im- 
patience and criticism of music of a higher order. After this 
familiarity has been gained, then let those who can do it well 
and easily take up the other parts, being sure that enough of 
the more powerful voices remain upon the melody to sustain it 
strongly and make it still the leading part. A beautiful theme 
stays in the memory, makes its impression on the heart, and 
often fixes words and sentiments in the memory. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Supday-setyool F^eords. 

i. The Class Record should be kept by each teacher. 
Attendance and punctuality are most important matters to be 
marked and discriminated. Attendance at the public service 
of the church may be encouraged by making note of it for 
each scholar on the class book. The fact of a contribution to 
the Sunday-school collection should also be entered. It is per- 
haps a question whether it is best for the teacher to note the 
amount given by each scholar. Unless all are similarly situated 
as to means or command of money, it is certainly not a fair 
basis of comparison. Except in a few extreme cases, each one 
can give something. Great care should be taken that the 
appeal to give be made to the highest motives, and not to the 
lower ones of emulation or regard for appearances, and that 
the poorest should not be made ashamed of the little they can do. 

The value of these records is that the teacher may know 
the facts and may be reminded of the duties which grow out of 
them : for example, looking up those who have been absent, 
inducing those who neglect the service of the church to reg- 
ular attendance, and training all to take some part in the 
support or charities of the school. 

2. The Executive Committee Records. If there is 
such a committee entrusted with some charge of the school or 
holding an advisory relation to it, its meetings and proceedings 
should be carefully recorded by themselves. It is not im- 
portant or advisable that this should cover all the things which 



Stmday-sckool Records, 121 

they discuss, but the motions which they adopt and the rec- 
ommendations which they make to the school should be thus 
carefully preserved. 

3. The School Records should be the most complete 
of all. They should begin with the organization of 
the school : the preliminary steps, the fact and process of 
organization, the first officers elected, with careful lists of the 
original teachers and pupils — all should be preserved. The 
interest with which the early entries are referred to, those 
schools or churches which have come to their twenty-fifth or 
fiftieth anniversaries can testify. 

There should be a carefully kept register of officers, 
teachers, and scholars, with the date of the beginning of 
their membership, and its termination where that has taken 
place. The residence and names of the parents of each 
minor should be entered. The reception of scholars to the 
church, or the fact of their church membership, the reason for 
their withdrawal from the school, and any important fact in 
their later history, will greatly add to the value of this register. 

The Records should contain minutes of the Annual 
Meetings, of the election of officers, of any votes or resolu- 
tions passed by the teachers or the school. 

A record should be kept by the secretary of the attendance 
for each Sunday, with a statement of the average for the 
quarter and the year. 

Either by copying it from the class books or, in a small 
school, by marking it directly, the individual attendance of 
teachers and scholars should be entered on the school Record. 
Without this there can be no accurate supervision of the 
teachers and no personal knowledge of the scholar's regularity 
and work. In some way this should always be secured. 

4. The Financial Record. Wherever money is handled, 
especially in a religious organization, it should be carefully 



122 The Model Sunday-school. 

accounted for. The receipts and expenses, the collections 
and charities should be kept to the last cent. 

If the church elects the superintendent and supports the 
school, the appropriation which it makes for this purpose is 
usually paid over to him. With his annual report to it, he 
accounts for its receipt and use and his account is duly audited. 

If the school provides for its own support, the money goes 
into the hands of its treasurer, and it is best that he should 
make his report to the school, and that they should by accept- 
ing approve it. 

Whoever has charge of the money, the secretary should 
keep the record of the weekly offerings and of all the votes 
of the school in regard to the disbursement of its funds. It 
is an additional assurance that all will be carefully and ac- 
curately done. 

5. Qualities of a Good Secretary. All this is the duty 
of the secretary, who should have the qualities of a good 
bookkeeper. He should be accurate, orderly, and neat. He 
should realize that he is an aid to the superintendent. He 
should avoid being fussy or making too much of his office. If 
he can add to these requisites a personal interest in the schol- 
ars and in the spiritual welfare of the school, he is in the best 
training to make a first-class superintendent. In a large school 
a secretary can either be found or trained. In a small school 
the superintendent can perhaps fulfill the duties of this office 
himself. 

6. Use of the Records. Whoever may make or keep 
these records should remember that they are not for the sake 
of the book or even of the secretary. They are first of all for 
the use of the superintendent. They will be of little 
value unless he examines them from time to time, or unless 
the important facts recorded are communicated to him 
promptly. He is the one to be kept informed of the coming 



Sunday-school R ecords. 1 2 3 

of new scholars (they should be reported to him before they 
take their seats in any class) , and of irregular teachers or ab- 
sentees. On the basis of this information, he is to inquire 
into the absences of his teachers and to see that they do the 
same with regard to their absentee scholars. He should be as 
faithful in looking after his teachers as he expects them to be 
in looking after their classes. 

In large schools where there are missionary or visiting 
committees, the information should go from the superin- 
tendent to them and they should report to him. 

The pastor should examine these Records from time to 
time. He too should know the facts both as to teachers and 
scholars, their regularity, fidelity, and efficiency. They are all 
part of his charge, and either in person or through others he 
should care for them. 

It is an excellent and interesting thing to have a scrap- 
book in which all programs, notices from the newspapers, or 
articles prepared and read by members of the school shall be 
kept. With a little care valuable history can be preserved in 
this way. 

In some schools certificates of membership are given 
to those who unite with the school, and letters of dismission to 
those who leave it. This is of value mainly in places where 
there is a rapidly changing population. These of course it is 
the care of the secretary to give and receive. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

$U9day-sel?ool D'terature, 

I. LESSON PELPS. 

We have referred elsewhere to the various ideas of Sunday- 
school teaching which have successively prevailed. It is not 
necessary here to speak again of the past. The International 
system of lessons has stimulated the preparation of a great 
number of valuable aids to their study. All of the larger 
denominations of Christians have their publishing houses, which 
to a great extent supply the wants of their own schools ; and 
private individuals in cooperation with enterprising publishers 
have entered into competition with them. The field is large 
and there is room in it, if not for all, at least for many. 

It would not be proper or politic in this place to make criti- 
cisms or comparisons. The question of importance is, What 
are the general principles by which such helps- should be 
selected ? It is perhaps not out of place here to say a word 
on the question of denominational loyalty. It seems rea- 
sonable that the authorized agency of a denomination should 
have at least the " benefit of the doubt " when the question 
arises, "Whom shall we patronize ?" The endorsement of an 
organized body of churches ought to be equal to the claims of 
any individual for recognition, even if it be supported by a 
few or many others. The fact that the profits belong to the 
denomination is worthy to be considered in the business aspect. 
And yet this is all that can be asked or claimed, that the 
churches help their own agency when they can do it without 

124 



Sunday-school L iterator e. 125 

loss to their own schools ; and this further, that they aid their 
own agency with kindly advice and criticism, rather than try 
to destroy it by unbrotherly censure and substitution. 

What are the tests of good Sunday-school helps? 
How shall we know what are the best ? 

1. They should stimulate. A proper help is not a 
crutch, but a vaulting pole. It should not make our step 
shorter or less firm, but more elastic and far-reaching. Rather, 
it is not a substitute for work, but a better tool to work with. 
It should not be an inducement to laziness, but an incentive to 
industry. 

They should therefore not be merely mechanical. A 
set of questions which can all be answered from the consec- 
utive sentences of the text is not stimulating. It is still worse 
if the answers are printed with the questions. It may give a 
valuable inventory of the contents of a given passage ; but 
there is no glow in an index. 

They should not be too simple, nor all within the easy 
reach of every fairly bright scholar. Some questions should 
be so easy that the wayfaring pupil, even though he were a 
dullard, need not err therein ; but others should lead the stu- 
dent on into unexplored regions by no means desert or devoid 
of beauty. Some sections of them should be confessedly a 
little beyond the average ability of the grade for which they 
are prepared. It is that which requires effort which stimulates. 
Helps should compel some study from all, and should invite 
much study from many. 

They should open up the lesson and not close it. 
They should have windows opening out on every side, from 
which the landscapes of the Word, with their sunrises of splen- 
dor and sunsets of promise, should be seen. Mere pellets of 
instruction swallowed at a gulp are better for medicine than 
for food. The best help is that which most acts as a tonic on 



1 26 The Model Sunday-school. 

the appetite for heavenly truth, stirs the mind, quickens the 
curiosity, and sets one on to seek as for hidden treasure. 

2. They should instruct. It is not enough to set the 
Bible before the unpracticed youth or older ones, and bid 
them learn. It is not so that we begin to study any of the 
varied books of nature. You do not take your boy whom you 
desire should gain a correct idea of astronomy, and say to 
him, " Study the starry heavens." For fifteen centuries since 
the star at Bethlehem " came and stood over where the young 
child was," and for at least four times as many centuries before, 
wise men had been studying the heavens in vain. Would you 
put each boy back where Adam was in his knowledge of the 
world ? On the other hand, you give him in general the results 
of all the right ideas to which his generation is the heir, and 
from that vantage ground he makes advance. Induction is the 
way to learn for the advanced student, after he has mastered 
the learning of the ancients. It is part of every best system 
of helps, but not the whole. 

An equally important work is to impart information which 
is yours but not yet your pupil's. There are many expressions 
in the Scripture which are meaningless to him, unless some 
man shall guide him who knows more than he. What does he 
know of " the course of Abijah," or." the generations of Adam," 
or a hundred other things which need a word of explanation ? 
Let him dig ? Yes ; but better dig with him as you would 
with your boy if he were going a-fishing, and point him out the 
worms turned up by your spade. 

Give information as to facts, and instruction as to prin- 
ciples, and give just enough to increase the healthful stimulus. 
The best helps will both inform and instruct in the contents of 
the lesson, beyond the lesson, and in the things both leading to 
it and out of it. Ambition is increased by attainment as well as 
by the sight of difficulties to be overcome. The consciousness 
of progress is a sharp spur to progress. 



Sunday-schoo I L iter attire. 127 

3. They should edify. To build character is the worthiest 
work in the world ; and whatever may be said of the impor- 
tance of quickening the mind or of feeding it, it is more im- 
portant than either that the heart and will be set right. The 
Bible is a guidebook more than it is a book of history or 
of doctrine \ for all these are but to illustrate or define the way 
in which we should go. The Bible is the most practical of 
books ; it bids us see and know, but it tells us how and where 
to go. Pilate says, " Behold the man ! " but Jesus says, " Come 
unto me." 

The best helps, then, will be Scriptural : they will hold to 
the very Word of God ; this is the food by which we live. 
Nothing which leads away from the Bible will be permanently 
helpful. We do not mean from the whole sixty- six books bound 
in one volume, but from its sacred and life-giving contents. 

It is not always the traditional reading or interpretation 
either in which the real Word is found. It may be in the 
Revised Version or in its marginal reading, to which many of 
the best translations of the Revision have been consigned. 
The meaning of Scripture is Scripture ; whatever help leads 
most directly to that is best. 

Such a help will never be fanciful. It will never turn illus- 
trations into types. It will be content with the Scripture use of 
Scripture in regard to all such matters. It will not find the 
divine sacrifice in Rahab's scarlet thread, but will be content to 
see it on Calvary. The truest reverence for Scripture will not 
allow itself to insert its own notions into its meaning, or to 
confound its own inferences with the declarations of the Spirit. 

The best help will also be spiritual. It will sympathize 
with the spiritual truths of the Word and with its spiritual aim. 
It will give evidence of prayer in its preparation. It will be 
evidently directed to effecting the highest religious advance- 
ment of those for whom it is prepared. It will have about it 



128 The Model Sunday-school. 

that atmosphere of reverence, that recognition of God's pres- 
ence in his Word, that attitude of expectancy as to its effect on 
human hearts, which betray the secret of its power. Without 
this sympathy and aim and atmosphere there can be but little 
impartation of spiritual life. 

II. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. LIBRARY. 

Its importance. While it is not the main purpose of the 
Sunday-school to furnish general or even religious reading to 
its members, yet, in these days of many books, it may serve 
an important end by providing that some of the best books 
shall be within their reach. There are a few pastors who 
rejoice that there is no library in their school, but these of 
course must be taking some vigorous measures in other 
ways to influence the reading in the homes of their charge and 
among the young people especially. Most pastors and super- 
intendents consider their work incomplete unless they are able 
not only to recommend but to furnish good books for home 
reading. 

Two kinds of libraries. What shall these books be? 
The answer depends much upon the community, upon what 
they have at command from other sources, upon the need to 
be met. We should lay down this general rule : Where there 
are many books in the homes, — of travel, of history, of biog- 
raphy, of fiction, — and where periodical literature abounds 
as well, or where there are public libraries stored with all 
these kinds of books, and easily accessible, the Sunday-school 
library should be strictly confined to books for Sunday read- 
ing. It is in this department that scarcity is more likely to 
exist than in any other. In communities where, on the other 
hand, the homes are scantily supplied and there are no treas- 
ure houses of literature open to all, the selection for the 



Sunday-school L iterature. 129 

Sunday-school library may well be somewhat wider in its range. 
It should, in this case, be clearly set forth that all these books 
are not intended or recommended for Sunday reading, but 
for the home, to be used with conscience and discrimination. 
Here, the best history, biography, travel, and fiction which 
have a distinctly elevating character and purpose may be 
mingled more liberally with those books which are prepared 
with especial reference to the spiritual needs of the Sunday- 
school. 

The old stigma out of date. Here let us note that 
the ancient and sometime deserved stigma which used to 
attach to Sunday-school books has ceased to be appropriate. 
Those who use it nowadays are probably thinking of the ex- 
perience of their early years, and have not noticed the great 
improvement here which has kept pace with that in other 
juvenile literature. It would be absurd to try to compare the 
delightful books and periodicals of our day — charming in 
matter not only, but in literary style and artistic decoration — 
with stories crudely written or coarsely printed and illustrated. 
The best publishers of Sunday-school books demand that the 
characters introduced should be lifelike, should talk in natural 
ways, and not "like a book " ; that they should be interesting, 
whether representing historical or fictitious characters ; that the 
English should be strong and good in style, and that the moral 
should be interwoven with the story and not inserted in special 
paragraphs of preachment or appended like the application 
of a sermon. There are many such books adapted for the 
Sunday-school library to-day. 

1. What a Library should Contain. A good library 
should contain books which help in the study and under- 
standing of the Bible, on Bible lands and characters and 
times \ books which are helpful toward or in the Christian 
life (there are times when these are needed and when they 



1 30 The Model Sunday-school. 

will be read ; they should be at hand) ; books of biography, 
of good men and true Christians and the heroes of missions at 
home and abroad, wrftten by those who are in sympathy with 
their characters and purposes. From this last source comes 
some of the best inspiration to noble living. 

2. The library should include histories of important 
periods in the Christian Church : for example, the first 
three centuries and the Reformation. There are valuable 
books on these subjects not too bulky or too heavy for the 
interest of intelligent young people. We have but little liking 
for that mixture of history and fiction which is called histor- 
ical fiction. It is the most difficult kind of writing and is 
rarely, though it is occasionally, successful in illuminating the 
obscure places of the past. If the historical element predom- 
inates, the real history is far better ; if the fiction is too con- 
spicuous, it obscures the facts, and at the best the real and the 
imaginary personages become strangely confused in the mind 
of the reader. A few books of this class are of real value. 

3. The library, after all effort has been made to include in 
it books of the classes which have been already named, will 
probably be composed of a large majority of books of fic- 
tion. Scarcely a generation ago such books were con- 
demned for a place in these,, if not in all, libraries for young 
people. Our own Publishing Society for many years refused 
to print books which even combined in one narrative real 
events gathered from various sources, as not according to the 
truth. That sentence has been removed, and it is granted 
that fiction may set before us characters which are models of 
excellence and teach lessons of virtue which are attractive and 
inspiring. Books of this class should be written in good 
literary style, and should be inspired with the highest motives 
to claim a place upon the shelves of our Sunday-school 
libraries. The conversations should be natural, and the char- 



Sunday-school L iterature. 131 

acters should explain themselves and not need the author to 
stand visibly by with a pointer to indicate which is which or 
of what kind. 

If they have anything to do with such love as results nat- 
urally in marriage, — and the less it is made conspicuous the 
better, — it should be the principle rather than the sentiment of 
love. The thrills and emotions should be omitted. The trust 
and respect on which true love is based are always elevating. 

The test of a book of any of these classes is not a page 
or a sentence here and there, but the general impression it 
makes for brightness or for dullness, for good or for evil. 

It is worth saying here, that it does no good to buy books 
for a circulating library that will not circulate. No matter 
how good they may be, they cannot exert a good influence if 
they stay on the shelf. On the other hand, the library, whether 
connected with the church or the town, should be above 
rather than quite down to the level of the tastes of the 
readers. It should have an elevating influence always on 
them. If you can get the readers of dime novels to enjoy a 
fiction which is pure and unexciting, you have made a most 
important step. How the library may be made to aid in this 
will be suggested under the title of The Librarian. 

The choice of the books. There should ordinarily be 
a Library Committee, of which the librarian and superin- 
tendent should be members, whose duty it should be to select 
the best books for use by the school. The principles of selec- 
tion have been in general already given. The composition of 
this committee will have more to do with the result than any 
mere statement of principles. They should be of course : 
(1) people of high Christian character; (2) of good literary 
discernment ; (3) of sympathy with the younger readers. 

The best way to select books for a general library is the way 
one would add to his own store of books — little by little. And 



132 The Model Sunday-school. 

yet we do not generally read a book through before buying it 
for ourselves. We judge largely by the subject and the author 
and in some cases by the publisher. 

Often it happens that a large addition must be made at one 
time. Then it is best to depend chiefly on previous 
careful examination made by others. This is better 
than a hasty examination by those who are not accustomed to 
the art of criticism. The Congregational Sunday-School and 
Publishing Society have the new books of all publishers ex- 
amined by trained critics, and those examinations are verified 
by a sufficient review in the editorial department, before they 
are added to the list of approved books kept in stock or sent 
out for the use or selection of school committees. Not more 
than one in ten of the books thus examined are approved. 
The value of this sifting process to our schools is very great, 
and it is usually quite safe to rely upon the judgments thus 
reached. 

The Librarian. Next to the selection of the best books, 
more depends upon the proper choice of a librarian and upon 
his competency and efficiency than all besides. If the super- 
intendent is the school, the librarian is the library. 

The worst choice which is often made for this office is to 
appoint some young man or older boy, perhaps mainly to keep 
him in some connection with the school, perhaps because he 
is a difficult pupil to manage. It is a good way for a teacher 
to secure the aid of such a scholar, to give him some respon- 
sibility and so gain his cooperation. But this is by far too 
important an interest of the school to be sacrificed for such a 
purpose. Especially where the library is in a separate room 
and all the time of the school is occupied in its duties, it too 
often becomes a lounging place for gossip and irreverent 
talking, and sometimes flirting. These young men or women 
are the very ones whom it is most important to have under 
the best teachers and the best teaching. 



Sunday-school L iter attire. 133 

Another bad choice for the office is to fill it with some 
one too dull to teach, who can only fulfill the mechanical and 
clerical duties of the place. You may by such a person have 
the books most neatly kept and covered and most accurately 
charged ; these are excellent things to be done, but they are 
of much less importance than other duties which are not so 
often considered. 

The proper person for librarian. What kind of a 
person, then, should be put in charge of the books? We 
answer, The most spiritual and most intelligent person in the 
school, and one who knows and is interested in the individual 
scholars as well. If there is one good man or woman who 
combines these qualities, put that one in this place. But you 
need ail such for teachers? That is true; then let such an 
one have general charge, and let the mere work of returning 
and giving out and charging books be done by some one who 
has this competence but not the other. Distinguish between 
a librarian and a library clerk. 

The true function of a librarian. It is just in this 
regard that the highest function of the model librarian lies. 
He will be far more than a mere library clerk. He will know 
the books in his care ; he will read them so as to be familiar 
with their style and contents. Then, he will know the teachers 
and pupils in the school; will learn something about their 
habits and opportunities of reading and their mental and 
spiritual needs, and on the basis of this knowledge he will try 
to adapt the one to the other. He will suggest this book to 
this boy, and that one to that teacher, having regard to the 
tastes as well as the wants of each. He will talk over a book 
occasionally with some reader, to see if he has gotten at its 
spirit and value, and, by indicating the important points, will 
teach him how to read. Every well-conducted public library 
nowadays has regard to such ability for advice on the part of 



134 The Model Sunday-school, 

those in charge. Of what exceeding importance such a use of 
the office can be in a Sunday-school who can tell? 

The library clerk. There are other duties which go with 
the office, or which may be done under its direction, which are 
merely mechanical and clerical. These are important in their 
place and essential to the preservation of the books, as books 
and as a library. Neatness and order are indispensable here, 
and a certain persistency to keep the books in their order 
and in their integrity requires patience and ingenuity. 
A little judicious use of glue often keeps a book from untimely 
dissolution : it atones in some measure for the original sin of 
the binder. 

A careful method of charging books to those who draw 
them out is needful. Any method is good which enables the 
library clerk to tell readily who is responsible for a certain 
book and how long that person has had it in possession. A 
card deposited in the place of the book does it, or a tag hung 
over its place in the library, if the date is put on the card or 
tag. Probably, after all, the best way is to use a book and a 
pen or pencil. The best arrangement of the book is to give 
a column to each numbered book and place the scholar's 
number in the space for the Sunday when the book is drawn. 
This enables one to trace the" book most easily, and to know 
who took it and when, and to credit its return by checking off 
the scholar's number. A simple card for the scholar, with his 
library number conspicuously at its head, with his name and 
class also upon it, and the numbers of the books from which 
he wishes one, completes the outfit. 

Library catalogues, if sufficiently complete, are of value ; 
but a mere list of titles and numbers is of little use. The 
books should be classified, the books for the primary and 
younger classes separated, and the catalogue should contain 
some brief description of the book or of its intent, with the 



Sunday-school Literature. 135 

name of the author. For example, " A story of the Crusades/' 
or " For older Girls," " For young Christians," " A volume of 
Travel," etc. Often the names are of no more significance 
than the numbers, and it is a mere lottery whether the book 
will at all fit the reader or not. In this case the library card 
is a mere lottery ticket. 

The teacher and the library. After all that has been 
said as to the nature of the highest duties of the librarian in 
knowing the books and knowing the readers and adapting the 
one to the other, it is still true that no ane person, whatever 
his official position may be, can do this without aid. It is the 
privilege and duty of every teacher to know what his scholars 
are reading, and to do all he can to guide them in their choice 
and use of books. The teacher's work is not merely to test 
his pupils as to their knowledge of a given lesson, or even to 
stimulate them to more thorough study. He is concerned in 
everything which tends to the formation of intelligent Chris- 
tian character in each of them. Among these influences he 
cannot ignore that of the books they read. 

Let him then find out what they are using for mental food ; 
whether it be wholesome bread and meat, or candies only, or 
even poisons. He can do this for his half dozen scholars, as 
the librarian cannot for the whole school. Let him lead them 
on to enjoy better books, consulting with the librarian and 
entering with him into this matter with all his wisdom and 
tact. A good teacher with a good librarian, if they have a 
good library at their disposal, can together accomplish much 
in this direction. 

A teachers' library is a. most valuable adjunct to any 
Sunday-school. It should contain cyclopaedias, Bible diction- 
aries, commentaries, descriptions of places and travel, any- 
thing indeed that may throw light upon the Land and the Book, 
and books of doctrine or experience which may enable the 



1 36 The Model Sunday-school. 

reader to see more clearly Him who is the Light of the 
World. 

III. OTHER LITERATURE. 

We have named the three sections of this chapter in the 
order of their importance. To have the best helps to the 
study of the Bible is first, of course. To provide elevating 
Christian books for home reading comes next. Besides these, 
there are other aids which are of value varying according to 
the place and condition of the school. 

Sunday-school papers have their place. A good paper 
of this order, either for youths, children, or little ones, is good 
anywhere and always. Of course it is especially appreciated 
and of peculiar importance where this is the only printed 
sheet whose tone is elevated morally or which has religious 
character that finds entrance to the homes of the people. 

Such a paper should convey Christian and moral truth. 
It should hold up a high ideal to old and young in its edito- 
rial paragraphs and in the articles which illustrate the manly 
and the Christian life by incident. Its aim should be to dis- 
cover and to foster the religious element (often hidden but 
always there) in the hearts of its readers. Many shy young 
Christians may be helped by the earnest and wisely directed 
efforts of the Sunday-school paper, who can be approached 
as well by nothing else. It should set out to aid young Chris- 
tians in the beginnings of the new life, and should not forget 
to have a few words of comfort or of counsel for the older 
ones into whose hands it may fall. 

With these suggestions as to its contents we need only say 
of its manner that it should be vivacious. There is nothing 
which repels young people more than that which is dull and 
lifeless. And yet it is not necessary to avoid being serious in 
order to be full of life. It need not let down its literary 



Sunday-school Literature. 137 

standard; it need not degenerate into slang; it certainly need 
not be flippant to be vivacious. Indeed it can hardly be this 
without being earnest and urgent. 

As to its material form, it should be on good paper, with 
illustrations which are really artistic and with clear and attract- 
ive type. It is demoralizing to make the vehicles of our 
religious thought and teaching mean and unworthy in their 
form. The association is bad and harmful. Rather it ought 
to be with all that is elevating in every way, so that the very 
name of a paper which comes thus from the church into the 
home makes a suggestion of pleasure to the eye as well as to 
the mind. Do not let us cheapen our religious literature 
too much lest it make religion itself seem in another sense a 
cheap thing. 

As to papers for the little ones, all that has been said 
above is true. This suggestion only needs to be added : 
there should be no picture and no sentence on their pages 
which does not appeal directly to the intelligence of those for 
whom they are prepared. No simple mother reading to her 
little child at home ought to be compelled to translate any 
part of it all into simpler words. It is strange how few writers 
for children remember always the narrow range of both the 
thoughts and the words in which the youngest readers can 
move freely. 



CHAPTER XV. 

pipages 3T)d (^>ariti<?s. 

I. FINANCES. 

Finances of a church school. I have already set 
forth the duty of the church to put the support of its own 
Sunday-school on the same basis with its provision for its 
preaching and prayer-meeting service. If it is able to pro- 
vide amply for these, it should devise equally liberal things for 
that. If it must exercise a severe economy in regard to its 
pulpit and its building, let it set up the same, but no more, 
rigid limits to its expenditure for its Sunday-school. In every 
case of a church school, let its expenses be paid from the 
common treasury, to which, if it be necessary, the school may 
contribute. This principle, I believe, should be applied without 
exception. All good parents do this in the education of their 
children : so does the state ; shall the Church of Jesus Christ 
be the only organization which does not regard its children as 
belonging to the household ? 

As to other than church schools, — branch, mission, 
pioneer, or union schools, — ■ there can be no general rule laid 
down. So far as possible, the community in which 
they exist should support them. In some cases those 
scholars who can afford to do it should be expected to pay 
each the few cents each quarter which the lesson help costs. 
In other cases, where the people are in extreme poverty, or 
where they must be taught to appreciate the school, every- 

138 



Finances and Charities, 1 39 

thing must be provided for a time without cost. But every 
community should be encouraged to support its own religious 
work as soon as it is able. People easily become helpless 
who are helped too much or too long. That is valued more 
highly and used more faithfully which costs something. 

What money should be spent for. A school should 
be as fully equipped for its actual work as is consistent with 
a wise economy. Every school ought to have a good map of 
Palestine and of the Bible lands, a blackboard, a sufficient 
supply of Bibles for those who cannot bring their own, of 
hymn books for all, and of lesson helps graded to meet the 
needs of the various classes and scholars. 

A little ingenuity and patience can supply these first at very 
slight cost. Almost any one can enlarge a map from those 
given in the Quarterlies, by marking the small map and a large 
sheet into corresponding squares. A map may be drawn on 
a large sheet of manilla paper with black ink or red, which 
will sufficiently show the location of the leading lands, seas, 
and cities of the Bible history. 

A blackboard can be made at small expense, or the flexi- 
ble blackboard cloth can be bought cheaply. Charts with 
names of kings or prophets, and dates, or with the years and 
events of the life of Christ or of the Apostolic Church, may be 
easily made on a sheet of muslin with stencil plates or hand 
lettering. 

The poorest place for economy is on the lesson helps. 
Much of the value of the whole work of the school depends 
upon the quality of these and the direction they give to study. 
We have tried elsewhere to indicate the criteria by which they 
maybe judged. We can only say here: Get the best — not 
always the most expensive, never the cheapest, but the most 
helpful in their contents, and these so well printed and illus- 
trated as to secure respect. 



140 The Model Sunday-school. 

II. CHARITIES. 

The object of the Sunday-school is not merely to impart 
knowledge of the Bible, but to cultivate Christian character. 
As a stream shapes the banks through which it flows, so spend- 
ing and giving money form character. This means of educa- 
tion should not be neglected, nor should it be treated care- 
lessly : it is worthy of serious consideration. 

It has an important bearing on the accomplishment 
of Christian missionary work. The gifts of the chil- 
dren, and the comparatively small gifts of the older ones 
which go through the Sunday-school treasury aggregate a large 
sum. Our Congregational Sunday-schools reported in the 
Year-Book for 1890 charities amounting to $144,000, and it 
is not probable that the whole amount thus given was reported. 
Only three of our seven national societies received more than 
that amount during that year in contributions from the living ; 
and this sum was fully equal to that received by three of the 
others together. Surely if the gifts of the Sunday-schools 
amount to so much as this, they should be wisely encouraged 
and directed. 

But even more important than this is the influence in 
training the Christian givers of the future. What the 
intelligent liberality of the next generation of Christian men 
and women will be depends largely upon the interest which is 
awakened in them, and the habits of cooperation which they 
learn now. 

It is well to remember too that many of the young in our 
Sunday-schools come from homes not otherwise attached to 
the church, that all their Christian training is received here, 
and that if they receive any education in this matter of Chris- 
tian giving, it must be from this source. 

1. Wrong and right motives. The good of giving to 



Finances and Charities. 141 

the giver depends upon the motive. In the training, then, 
great care should be exercised to keep out unworthy motives 
and to give prominence to the highest. 

Emulation should never be appealed to. The scholar or 
the class which gives the largest sum should not be publicly or 
privately commended merely for that. Liberality is to be 
judged not by the amount that is given, but by what is left ; 
or by a comparison of what is given with what is spent on self. 
It is good to encourage the participation of all, but the meas- 
ure should be the ability of each. 

Still less should scholars be shamed into giving, or allowed 
to feel a sense of disgrace because they can do nothing or 
much less than others. This is in many cases sheer cruelty. 

The motive to be appealed to is Christian love. That is 
the very meaning of the word charity; and these gifts should 
be so far as possible gifts of love : of love to God for his un- 
speakable gift and for all the good he does us ; of love which 
seeks to please him by helping on the work which is most on 
his heart ; of love for all our Father's children who lack our 
opportunities and especially our gospel. 

2. The method should be intelligent. It should in- 
volve a careful selection of objects. This can best be done by 
a committee, either the Executive Committee of the school or 
a special committee on charities. The school should know that 
the objects recommended are of real need, and are thoroughly 
understood by those who approve them. They should 
be so clearly stated that their nature can be comprehended. 

It is important that the school should know at the 
time for what its offerings are being given. A good 
plan is to place the object upon the blackboard or upon a 
chart, where it may be seen during the time it is being aided. 
This is far better than to give on week after week and then 
vote away the money already raised. There is more interest 



142 The Model Sunday-school. 

in giving this sum for that object than for general charities. 
There is far more opportunity for education in it and for keep- 
ing the object definitely before the scholars' minds. There 
is likely to be a greater effort made for a particular cause than 
for a general work. On all accounts keep clearly before the 
school the object for which the offering of each week is made : 
let it be an offering to the Lord and for some special and 
understood need. 

(a) Children especially need to have before them some 
concrete case. If their money can go to establish or to 
aid some Sunday-school in a destitute community, at home or 
in a foreign field, and they can hear of the joy it carries and 
the help it gives, that makes the whole matter of giving real to 
them. They know then that it is not to pay their teachers 
that they are asked to give. Their sympathies are called forth 
toward those of whom they hear. 

(I?) But they ought not to be always confined to giving for 
a definite place ; still less to the aid of particular individuals. 
Institutions are more safe to give to than either. As soon as 
possible after this preliminary training, turn the offerings of the 
children to the work of an individual missionary. Get 
them to be interested in all that he does, in the progress of 
his whole field. By occasional letters he can lead them on to 
understand better, and so to be more interested in the larger 
work. 

(c) And then let your school graduate into that wider 
giving in which the church participates, by contributing to 
our national societies. 

This training to intelligent giving cannot well follow these 
steps in merely a succession of time. They can best be done 
together. Once or twice a year let some specific case make 
its appeal. The remainder of the time let the general wants of 
our great home and foreign fields receive aid. In this way you 



Finances and Charities. 143 

reach all classes and increase the intelligence both as to par- 
ticular places and more general work. 

Remember that knowledge is necessary to love, 

and intelligence comes by instruction. It is not enough to 
put our money into an envelope or box, and know that it is 
to be devoted to some good object. The object should always 
be definite, whether the money goes to a specific field or to 
the general work of an organization. Those who give should 
be informed so that they may know what their money is to 
help. 

Locate the places where help is to go on a map. Procure 
pictures if possible. Tell incidents connected with it. Try in 
every way to make the place, the need, and the work definite 
and clear. 

Love follows knowledge. It cannot precede it. Special 
concern and sympathy flow out toward those whose needs we 
know and whose relief we see. And love for God and for his 
kingdom increases as we come to see the need of his grace, 
and the righteousness and peace and joy which follow where 
the knowledge and love of him are extended. 

3. Giving One's Own Money. It is important that all 
who give should make an offering of that which costs 
them something — of that which is their own. It is not 
giving, simply to be the agent for transferring money from the 
parental to the Sunday-school treasury ; that is, it is surely not 
the giving of the transfer agent. It is the parent who is the 
giver. In order that children may offer of their own, they 
must have something of their own to offer. This must depend 
mainly on the parent. We believe it is best in a home where 
there is enough for comfortable living for each child to have 
an allowance, on the condition that they will keep a careful 
account of its expenditure, or that they regularly render some 
helpful service to the household. Where this cannot be done, 



144 The Model Sunday-school. 

there should be some opportunity to earn a little money from 
parents or from others. The giving of the child should be 
altogether from this fund which is at its own disposal, so that 
it shall mean the foregoing of some indulgence or the prefer- 
ring this to some other use of his money. 

In many cases what is called the Talent System has 
been used with remarkable results. Some one has given each 
scholar who would take it a cent or a nickel and they have 
been asked to use their ingenuity to increase that capital and 
bring back the proceeds at a given time. The interest awak- 
ened, the generous rivalry stimulated, the satisfaction of return- 
ing the amount with its increase has been great, and the 
ingenuity of the plans and their carrying out have been most 
pleasing. 

4. Some part of the giving of every one should be system- 
atic. Where the allowance or the earnings are regular, a 
pledge may be made of so much each week. The habit thus 
formed is much better than the occasional and spasmodic giv- 
ing of most people. Paul's plan was a laying aside on the first 
day of each week, as the Lord had prospered each one, that 
when he should come to receive their offerings there should 
be no gathering, that having all been done before. The results 
of a weekly offering where all participate are usually larger by 
a good deal than the amounts given in answer to appeals. 

5. The giving may and ought to be dignified by those 
who manage it. It ought, never to be called the penny col- 
lection. That makes it a small matter, and suggests a small 
measure of giving. Call it the offering, make it an act of 
service to God ; in the prayers of the school ask God to bless 
it and the object which it is to aid, and somehow set it before 
the school as an important part of their work. In the pri- 
mary department sometimes the children march and sing as 
they make their offering, dropping their gifts in the box as they 



Finances and Charities. 145 

pass by. In the more advanced departments the class envel- 
ope is commonly used. Whatever the plan, it should be in 
the mind of both teacher and superintendent to make the 
giving a real and a worthy offering to the Lord. 

Giving is worship. Giving is worship if the motive of it 
be the right one. It is a prayer for the coming of the kingdom 
of God. Among the spoken petitions of every session of the 
school, there should be one for generous hearts open to the 
needs of others, for the Lord's acceptance of the offering of 
the day, and for his blessing upon its use in his service. 

Possibly some cautions are needed here. 

1. Distinguish between Expenses and Charities. 
A careful distinction should be made between what is raised 
for the expenses of the Sunday-school and the offering for 
charitable purposes. Never, under any circumstances, should 
money raised for charity be appropriated to home expenses. 
It is a dishonesty and teaches dishonesty to the children. Nor 
is it wise, while it may not be dishonest, to raise money for 
both purposes at once, from which the home wants shall first 
be met and the remainder given away. It tends to confuse 
two entirely distinct acts. It leads to unnecessary expendi- 
ture often at home, and to the use of a larger proportion of 
the available funds than was intended by the donors. Always 
let the school know what it is raising money for and let it 
know in advance. 

2. Difference between Church and Sunday-school 
Giving. We believe most heartily that every church should 
contribute to our seven denominational missionary societies ; in 
even the poorest of them we would have the opportunity given. 
But we are not so sure that it is wise to urge every Sunday- 
school to give to all of these, at least every year. We should 
have more regard to training than to the amount given. We 
cannot expect the children and young people to assume all the 



146 The Model Sunday-school. 

responsibilities of those of mature age. We would teach the 
children the names, the initials, and the objects of each of the 
national societies, using the Home Missionary Society's star or 
printing the initials of the same on a chart to be always in 
sight of the school. There are certain of these which have a 
special claim from the nature of their work. And for a spe- 
cialty which has the strongest claim on the sympathy and sup- 
port of our Sunday-schools, we would keep before them our 
own Sunday-school missionary work for at least 10,000,000 of 
the children and youth who are growing up in our own land 
without the institutions of the gospel. 

3. Do not Scatter Too Much. Some cautions are 
needed in regard to the direction of the giving of the school. It 
is looked upon sometimes by pastors as a convenient way of 
meeting those outside calls for which they find no place provided 
in the church offerings. Sometimes a superintendent prefers that 
the giving of the school should be to other objects than those to 
which the church contributes. To all such we say : — 

Don't pick up for the Sunday-school all the odds and ends 
of stray causes ; don't let the church put off on you all the 
claims pressed by urgent individuals, and to which the church 
itself does not care to respond ; don't put the bulk of your 
money into fresh-air funds and flower missions, as though 
these were of more importance or of more interest than the 
spread of the good news to grown-ups and children ; don't fail 
to teach them their special responsibility to our own denomina- 
tional organizations for home and foreign work. 

4. Do not Overdo the Matter. Don't urge the chil- 
dren to give in proportion to their little means a hundred times 
more than you would give yourself ; don't confuse them with a 
multiplicity of claims and organizations. It is possible to pro- 
duce reactions. Lead the children to desire to give from high 
and intelligent motives, and the disposition will grow with the 
ability. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

C^op^rts, pestiuals, ar?d {^tertaipmeijts. 

I. SUNDAY-SCHOOL CONCERTS. 

The origin of the Sunday-school Concert was a 
concert of prayer for the Sunday-school. It was concerted 
prayer on the part of parents and teachers, not a concert for 
their entertainment as it has come to be often in our days. 
There is no special appropriateness in the name when it is an 
exercise of whatsoever kind of a particular school. 

It should not be an exhibition of smart or forward 
children where they are dressed in party dress and set up 
to be admired or laughed at. Little Jimmie says his piece in 
a singsong way : few can understand the words ; there is 
no sentiment in it as rendered, and he goes down with a 
shrug and a grimace, and all the people laugh. Now and 
then there is an exception to this ; some child does its part 
in all simplicity, and the effect is sweet and touching. But 
it is mainly exhibition. 

We are almost equally opposed to its being made an 
artistic performance with stage scenery, crosses, and gates 
ajar — what may properly be called a performance. This 
appeals to the desire for scenic representation, but cannot be 
made to rival the theatrical stage, though it may serve in a 
mild way to cultivate a taste which can only be fully grati- 
fied by it. 

The Sunday-school concert should have some relation 
to the work of the school — either to its regular studies or 



148 The Model Sunday-school. 

to its history or to special seasons of the year. It should include 
the same elements which belong to the school. It should be 
a service of the children, not to them or to their older friends. 
Its service of song should be a service of worship under the 
same general limitations which are referred to under the head 
of Music. Its prayer should be marked by the same devout- 
ness and simplicity. It should have a theme which should 
guide the selections of Scripture and the addresses, which 
should have in it the elements of instruction and impression. 
It should have a purpose, and that should be to aid the school 
in accomplishing its main object for its regular attendants, and 
perhaps to make it attractive to those who have not been 
members of it. 

The qualities which should characterize such services are : 

1. They should be Biblical. The text-book which is the 
center of the study of the school should be central here. It 
should be honored and magnified. The selections from it 
should be made with care. Their intention should be made 
clear to those who listen to or who join in reading them. The 
addresses too should be based upon them, and by frequent 
reference show that its truths guide the thoughts and language 
of the speakers. 

2. They should be simple. Everything which has main 
regard for children should have this quality. It is sufficient to 
please those who have not been spoiled by too much artificial 
pleasure. It is far better for them. That which is complex 
and unnatural tires while it pleases. That which is simple and 
according to nature rests while it delights. Let us help child- 
hood to keep its simple tastes, and not help educate it away 
from its naturalness. 

3. They should be varied. The arrangement should be 
diversified as much as possible. The same succession of sim- 
ilar things should be avoided. Begin sometimes with a hymn, 



Concerts, Festivals, and Entertainments. 149 

sometimes with a prayer, sometimes with an introductory sen- 
tence of Scripture. Let the theme teach the order and not 
habit. Avoid ruts. Make your paths every time if possible. 
The unexpected, however simple ; the surprise, even of familiar 
things, always help to keep the interest and sustain the atten- 
tion of the young. 

4. They should be brief. Do not plan for too much. 
Allow a little time for a slower movement through your program 
than you had counted on. One hour is long enough for any 
children's service ; an hour and a quarter should be the outside 
limit. Send them away alert and wide awake. Cut out any- 
thing rather than keep them too long. Do not invite some 
one from abroad to speak to them and have fifty minutes of 
what are called concert exercises before you call upon him. 
There is only time then for the few kind words from the 
pastor, without which such a service is seldom complete • and 
if you have a pastor who is able to talk to children, you need 
not go outside for your main speaker very often. 

How often should such services be held? They used to 
be held monthly by many more schools than now. There are 
places perhaps where this is not too often. If so frequent as 
this, there ought to be some connecting plan on which to work 
through the year, so that there may be something built up 
by its end — some historical or moral or doctrinal result in 
knowledge and impulse. 

II. FESTIVALS. 

Most of our larger schools have come to make their concerts 
celebrations of the festival days which have come to be ob- 
served generally by the churches. These are Christmas, Easter, 
Children's Sunday, and Thanksgiving, with frequently a com- 
memoration of the anniversary of the school. These five are 
in most cases enough, and as each has a character and purpose 



150 The Model Sunday-school. 

of its own, there is little danger of monotony. In these the 
children may have part in the three great festivals of our 
Christian year, and in two services which are peculiarly their 
own. There are a great variety of exercises prepared for these 
services, which may be followed in full or in part, or from 
which hints may be taken and selections made. 

1. Christmas. The religious celebration of Christmas 
should keep clearly before all the birth of Jesus as the In- 
carnation of God. It is unworthy of a Christian institution 
that it should have a Christmas entertainment and not a 
Christmas service — that it should observe the pagan and omit 
the Christian festival. 

2. Easter brings its own theme. Coming as it does always 
on the Lord's day, it has nothing to interfere with its keeping 
as a day of religious observance. Let it commemorate the 
Resurrection, the victory of Christ over the grave for himself 
and for his own. 

3. Thanksgiving, or the Sunday preceding or following 
Thanksgiving day, has its own delightful associations. It is 
often made a harvest festival, with decorations from the gar- 
den, the orchard, and the farm ; with songs of thanksgiving 
for the mercies of the year, and with special offerings for the 
needy ones of the neighborhood. 

4. Children's Day is of later growth, but has been 
heartily adopted by the churches and is one of their brightest 
and best days. Something like it or out of which it has grown 
had been observed by individual pastors here and there doubt- 
less before any denomination had taken formal action in regard 
to it. In 1867 the Universalist Convention recommended it 
as a day for the dedication of children in all the churches. 
The Methodist General Conference in 1868 recommended 
" that the second Sunday in June be annually observed as 
Children's Day, and that in each Sunday-school we attempt 



Concerts, Festivals, and Entertainments. 1 5 1 

the collection of an average of five cents for each child en- 
rolled." In 1883 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church designated the same Sunday as Children's Day, " with 
special services for the children," and " the vital topics of the 
Christian nurture and the conversion of the young," to " be 
pressed upon the thought of the entire congregation." 

Most denominations have, by official action, requested 
churches and Sunday-schools, in observing the day, to make 
an offering for Sunday-school missionary work. 

The National Council in 1883 appointee), a committee to 
promote the interests of Congregational churches in Sunday- 
school work. This Committee addressed a letter to the State 
Associations, requesting, among other things, that they recom- 
mend the observance of the second Sunday in June as Chil- 
dren's Sunday. This action we believe has been taken in all 
the state bodies of Congregational churches in the United 
States. A large proportion of the churches now hold special 
services for children on the second Sunday of June. The 
National Council in 1886 approved and adopted this action 
of its committee, and at its later sessions has repeatedly re- 
newed the recommendation, coupled with that of a special 
contribution to our Sunday-school missionary work. These 
contributions have steadily increased until they aggregate 
nearly §20,000. If they averaged five cents for each mem- 
ber, the amount would be fully §33,000. 

The usual services include floral decoration of the church, 
singing and responsive readings by the children, the baptism 
of infants, presentation of Bibles by the church to baptized 
children who have reached the age of seven years, a sermon to 
the children by the pastor, and an offering to the missionary 
work of our Congregational Sunday-School Society. These 
exercises, of course, are varied, according to circumstances. 

5. The Sunday-school Anniversary should of course 



152 The Model Sunday-school. 

be centered about the year's history of the school. Its report 
of numbers, of changes, and of spiritual gains should be the 
basis of the addresses to be made. It is a time, too, on the 
basis of the past record, for new plans and resolves. It ought 
to be a serious but cheerful service. 

As to the hour when these services should be held : we 
suggest that it should be an hour when all who constitute the 
school can attend. It seems a great pity to appoint a Sunday- 
school service in the evening or at an hour when the smaller 
children, whose interest in it is greater than that of any other 
class, can not or ought not to attend. It is so too often, but it 
is because it is regarded as an exhibition addressed to others 
rather than a service of and for the school. 

III. ENTERTAINMENTS. 

These are entirely distinct in spirit and purpose from the 
concerts or festivals of the school. Those should be religious, 
these are social. Those are for worship and instruction, these 
are for acquaintance and recreation. They are generally ap- 
pointed one in the winter and one in the summer. 

1. The summer entertainment is usually an outdoor 
affair ; an excursion by wagon, rail, or boat, or a picnic nearer 
home. The nearest object is to give a day of innocent pleas- 
ure to the children and to others for whom such occasions may 
be rare. The remoter purpose is that all may come to know 
each other better, and that pastor, superintendent, and teach- 
ers may show their interest in parents and children, and in all 
that concerns their pleasure and profit, that so they may be 
the better able to help them in the best things. 

2. The winter entertainment is usually connected 
with Christmas. The religious celebration of the birth of our 
Lord is probably held on the Sunday nearest the twenty-fifth 



Concerts, Festivals ', and Entertainments. 153 

of December. The holidays give a good afternoon or evening 
for an indoor gathering. Here let the same spirit of innocent 
pleasure and of hearty good-will prevail : let the chief thought 
be to give pleasure to others rather than to seek it for self. 
While those who can only receive are made happy, those who 
give most come to the deepest joy. 

As to the details of such gatherings, they must be guided by 
the place and people. 

3. Instructive Entertainments. Other gatherings in 
which instruction and entertainment are blended may add 
much to the interest and value of a school. Lectures, illus- 
trated if possible by stereopticon, pictures, chart, map, or by 
objects, may be given on biblical subjects, on foreign or home 
travel, on various scientific themes, or on the branches of in- 
dustry in which members of the church or school are engaged. 
These will serve to bind the school together, to give infor- 
mation on other than religious subjects, and to impress the 
scholars with the real interest of the officers and teachers in 
them as shown in these extra-official and voluntary services. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

I^eu/ards or F^eo^itiops. 

How shall fidelity be distinguished ? Shall it receive 
any notice, and what shall the notice be if any is taken of it ? 
This is a question which is seldom thought of except in con- 
nection with the larger and best organized schools ; and yet 
it is one which, if a principle is established, may be of con- 
sequence to even the smallest. 

Shall fidelity be rewarded ? If by that is intended, Shall 
it receive some present of money value? we should answer 
decidedly, " No." While, doubtless, " honesty is the best 
policy," it is not wise to appeal to that as a motive. Fidelity 
reaps a large reward in habits, character, and knowledge 
gained, and these should be the prizes held before the young. 
We would not belittle them by offering money, books, or even 
Bibles as a reward. 

Recognitions are better than rewards. It is an excellent 
thing to recognize and to encourage faithfulness by honoring 
it. By some personal or class badge or banner, by a Roll of 
Honor on which the names of those who have done well are 
inscribed, by some mention before the school at the regular 
sessions or at quarterly reviews or at the Anniversary, a spirit 
not of emulation but of laudable ambition may be aroused 
which may do much to promote the prosperity and usefulness 
of the school. 

There are three lines in which faithfulness may properly 
receive an honorable recognition : — 

154 



Rewards or Recognitions. 1 5 5 

1. Attendance. Everything else will depend on this. 
There can be no valuable results to the individual and no good 
influence upon the school without regularity and punctuality 
in this. 

Both the individual and the class may receive this recogni- 
tion. The scholar or the class present punctually at every 
session during the quarter may receive some simple badge or 
be marked by a simple banner. Then at the end of the year 
those who have been thus marked each quarter may have a 
certificate for their own permanent keeping which will be 
prized as the years go by. 

In some cases, attendance at one session of the church each 
Sunday, and in others the bringing of their own Bibles to the 
school, are added to simple attendance as requirements for 
such recognition. 

In some schools distinction is made between those abso- 
lutely in their places every Sunday and those present when not 
sick or out of town. There should be a very slight distinction, 
if any, drawn between these two classes, and it should probably 
be done away with entirely when the absent scholar has written 
to his teacher explaining the reason for his absence. In such 
case, his thoughtfulness should be considered quite equal to 
his bodily presence. He could be marked (L) " present by 
letter." 1 

2. Recruiting. It is certainly an indication of active 
interest in the school when scholars seek to bring in others to 
enjoy its benefits. Here some token of approbation maybe 
given to the individual or class bringing in the largest number 
of new scholars who become regular members of the school. 
But in this proselyting should be carefully guarded against. 
Those who have been or are attending other schools should not 
be counted, and it should be held to be no proof of fidelity, 

*A Model Superintendent, page 31. 



1 56 The Model Sunday-school. 

but only of lack of discretion, to endeavor to induce such to 
change from one to another school. 

3. Scholarship. This is next in importance to attend- 
ance. Indeed this is that for which attendance is important. 
And yet regularity of attendance has as much to do with 
the formation of character as the acquiring of even Scripture 
knowledge. 

In the Primary Department a thorough knowledge of the 
Golden Texts of the quarter should receive some recognition. 

In the higher departments a satisfactory passing the oral or 
written review examination should have a certificate. And the 
passing from one to another department of the school upon 
satisfactory evidence of fitness may properly receive a certifi- 
cate of promotion. 

The method. Just how fidelity in these various directions 
should be marked will depend upon the school, its size and 
character. Simplicity and inexpensiveness are important 
elements in any case. The victors in the Grecian games were 
content with a wreath of laurel : the honor was in the victory. 

Just how far these systems of recognition can be intro- 
duced into any school will depend upon the superintendent, 
his sense of order and fitness, and his ability to keep the dis- 
tinctions clearly before the school. 

The principle is recognition, and not reward. The appeal 
is to the love of approbation, a motive which properly moves 
all good people through life. No one could easily adopt a full- 
giown and elaborate system and make it work. Adopt no 
more in this direction than you can see your way to work ; let 
the machinery be simple and its running smooth. 

Mr. Marion Lawrance, of Toledo, Ohio, has probably de- 
veloped the most complete system of recognitions in use 
by any superintendent. In his skillful hands they work 
admirably. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

QoQV<?9tioQ5 apd Ipstitot^s. 

It is natural that those engaged in a common and impor- 
tant work should from time to time plan to meet together to 
compare experiences, to discuss methods, to enjoy fellowship, 
and to pray for the success of their work. There is advantage, 
no doubt, in all such gatherings. Some are inspired to new 
effort and some to new hopefulness in their own home work. 

The two forms of gathering named above are probably 
united in most, if not in all, meetings of Sunday-school 
teachers and officers. The distinguishing idea of the 
convention is rather the inspiration coming from the asso- 
ciation of those with the same interests. The special thought 
of the institute is instruction, and that particularly (if the 
derivation of the word has any determining significance) in 
the principles of Sunday-school teaching. There are few, if 
any, conventions but have to some extent the institute idea, 
and no institutes can be held except upon the basis of the 
convention. 

The larger assemblies too, of international, national, state, 
or county gatherings, take this first and broader name. Doubt- 
less they have their place and function as the gatherings of 
the leaders and representatives of union interdenominational 
or denominational Sunday-school work. Of course the larger 
the assembly and the broader the field from which it is 
gathered, the less homogeneous it is, and the more general are 
the discussions which it can profitably maintain. 

157 



1 58 The Model Sunday-schooL 

As this book has regard to the needs of the local school and 
those who care for it, it is evident that it is the institute to 
which it naturally calls attention \ and the more local this 
is the better it will meet the wants of the locality. The 
schools of a city or of a conference, or any half dozen or 
dozen schools which are near neighbors, have many common 
wants which can be considered in a meeting made up mainly 
of their own superintendents and teachers. Their difficulties 
can be considered in the light of their opportunities. Many 
considerations which are evidently inapplicable to them may 
be omitted. The whole gathering can take on a more collo- 
quial and personal character than would be possible or profit- 
able in a larger assembly. 

It is well to have some expert superintendent or 
teacher with them to instruct, suggest, and reply to 
questions. With wise guidance from such an one, the more the 
representatives of these neighboring schools compare notes 
and make plans among themselves the better. 

It is best at such an institute to consider both aspects 
of the work, the subject matter and the method of teaching 
and administering the school. One line of study should be 
upon The Book we Teach, the other upon The Way to 
Teach It. 

A superintendents* class. Upon the best methods of 
conducting the school it is perhaps best to have a superin- 
tendents' institute, or at least a separate session. The 
superintendents in attendance at any such local institute could 
form a class apart, before or after the other meeting, could 
talk freely together without exposing themselves to the criti- 
cisms of their teachers, and could help one another and be 
helped to the best advantage. 

As to the topics which may with advantage be considered 
at such a gathering, they are most of them suggested in the 



Conventions and Institutes. 1 59 

various chapters and paragraphs of this handbook. As to 
those which relate to the Bible, they are contained in the 
various books prepared for normal class use, of which of 
course only the larger and more general aspects can be treated 
within the brief limits necessary to such a meeting. 

The great good, after all, is a glimpse at things to be studied 
and thought of later. It gives a bird's-eye view of the much 
land which is to be possessed only by patient continuance in 
faithful study. It produces a quickening of the mind and 
heart for the life work. 

It is a great advantage to those who can attend the sum- 
mer assemblies, which continue in session for a longer 
time and extend the benefits of the institute into the larger 
opportunities of the normal class. We should urge any whose 
leisure would allow it to avail themselves of these ; but the 
great mass of our superintendents and teachers are as far from 
such advantages as they are from those of a university educa- 
tion, and for them the more limited privileges are the most 
they can hope, and these even are beyond the reach of many. 
To such we can only say, Get all the light and help you can 
and ask the Source of all revealed truth to enable you to 
receive it and to teach it. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

T<?mp<?rai}G<? \T) tye StiQday-sefyool. 

Two propositions on this subject are of equal impor- 
tance to be stated and remembered : — (i) That neither the 
church nor the Sunday-school is or can be a temperance 
society, in the modern and limited sense in which that word is 
used. This is not their first and essential object. (2) That 
every church and Sunday-school is under the highest moral 
obligation to do all that is in its power to promote the cause 
and practice of temperance. 

First of all, temperance should be taught in the 
Sunday-school. The great principle of self-restraint in all 
things : moderation in the use of all good things, and absti- 
nence from the use of all things which are bad in themselves 
and in their general effects. It should be taught from the 
desk and in the class, as an illustration and as direct divine 
teaching. It should be taught wisely and honestly. The 
Scriptures should not be tortured into this service any more 
than into the support of any other duty or doctrine. Much 
has been made of a regular quarterly lesson. We should 
much prefer an irregular one, one not labeled with the name, 
one which should treat of this virtue alongside of others, and 
give it a place among, and not apart from, other Christian 
graces. It should be in the minds of both superintendent 
and teachers as of constant importance, touching a danger 
which threatens all homes and all society, and a virtue which 
is essential to Christian character. 

160 



Temperance in the Sunday-school. 161 

Organization. But, beyond the teaching, what? Should 
there be some kind of organization, which should aim to exert 
a special influence in this direction ? 

It follows from the first of these propositions that any action 
or organization which should be made within such a body 
ought to be inclusive rather than divisive. That is, it 
ought to take such ground, so broad and Christian and char- 
itable, as not to exclude from cooperation any who are really 
in sympathy with its great end and purpose. On the other 
hand, it ought to do what it does so as to unite and concentrate 
the influence of those who feel some responsibility in this matter, 
so as to strengthen the weak and stimulate the careless and 
educate the young. What can be done which will not at once 
bring to the front all the contrasts of sentiment and theory, 
but which will yoke together all the possible agreements of 
feeling and desire? 

A plan is suggested which has been used with some meas- 
ure of success in more than one church. It may include all 
in both the church and Sunday-school who are willing to coop- 
erate in this way. 

The organization is extremely simple and the constitu- 
tion brief. Three annually elected officers with two others 
constitute an executive committee. A public meeting to be 
held quarterly is provided for. The most important article of 
the Constitution reads thus : — 

Our object shall be : — (i) " To give our testimony to 
the value and manliness of temperance, and of abstinence as 
the truest temperance in regard to all intoxicating beverages. 

(2) "To do what we can to strengthen ourselves in these 
convictions, and to lead others to them. 

(3) " To plant ourselves upon the two principles of Chris- 
tian conduct, self-denial for the sake of one's own highest 
good, and self-sacrifice for the good of others. 



1 62 The Model Sunday-school. 

(4) " And, in all, to point to the grace of God in our Lord 
Jesus Christ as alone able to keep us from falling, and to es- 
tablish us in every good word and work." 

Abstinence is here declared to be the truest rather than the 
only temperance, that those might not be driven off who can- 
not accept a narrower definition. 

To avoid the prejudice which many hold against the pledge, 
especially as offered to the young, both in its absolute promise, 
the violation of which makes one a liar, and in its perpetually 
binding force, which mortgages one's future forever (we are 
only quoting objections which are often made), a declaration 
of purpose was substituted as practically of equal effective- 
ness for influence and education. It reads thus : — 

" We, the undersigned, do hereby express our sense of the 
evil and danger of the use of alcoholic drinks, and our pur- 
pose to abstain from and discountenance the use of all intoxi- 
cating beverages." 

Signature to this declaration constitutes membership. Many 
whole families sign it together. 

A further provision is this, which is also from the constitu- 
tion, and which is printed with every card of membership : — 

" Members may be released from their membership 
and from their obligations to this union involved in signing the 
declaration set forth by it, upon making application in writing 
to the secretary for such release." 

This provision would probably call forth special criticism, 
but in fact it is a permission which, so far as we know, has 
never been used. Practically it makes the signature always 
the declaration of a present purpose, and not the 
record of a past promise, 

We believe that some organization of this kind, simple and 
attractive to those of diverse sentiments, may be of service in 
connection with any church or Sunday-school. 



CHAPTER XX. 
^OT)Q\U$\OT). 

We have thus gone over at least some of the particulars 
necessary to the organization and maintenance of a model 
Sunday-school. A glance at the history and development 
of the Sunday-school as we have it ; its definition and aim ; 
its relations to home, church, and pastor ; its form of organiza- 
tion ; its officers, with their qualifications and duties ; its con- 
duct in regard to reviews, music, records, literature, charities, 
festivals, rewards ; a few words as to the place and value of 
institutes, and a suggestion as to the place for temperance work, 
make up the book. 

Doubtless all readers will not agree with all the advice 
given ; some things will seem impracticable and some unwise. 
We have not intended to claim that all this counsel is good 
for all. And yet there are none of the courses advised which 
have not been successfully tried somewhere. They may not 
fit all cases, but they do fit some. Meanwhile we have set up 
a model, not to condemn those who have not attained to it, 
but to stimulate and encourage them. Any workman can 
build to better advantage if he has some definite ideal in 
mind, however the practical necessities of the case may pre- 
vent him from following it closely. One should not be dis- 
couraged because he cannot attain his ideal. He should, 
however, never be entirely satisfied while it is unreached. 
Our advice in all points is : if you cannot have the best, 
have the best you can, 

163 



164 The Model Sunday-school, 

There are doubtless many questions which this handbook 
does not answer, and needs which it cannot meet. That it 
may have some light to give to those who need it most, at 
least that it may shed no darkness, and that all who need 
wisdom may find it from the liberal and unreproving Giver, is 
the writer's earnest prayer. 

It is enough encouragement to study and to toil to remem- 
ber that "the teachers shall shine as the brightness of the 
firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the 
stars for ever and ever." l 

1 Daniel 12: 3. Margin of Revised Version. 



INDEX. 



Abraham: why blessed, 26. 

Absentees: how followed up, 99. 

Adaptability of the Sunday-school, 70. 

Adults: effect of their attendance, 65: 
classes should choose their courses of 
study, 67; should not become debating 
societies 67. 

Age : to be regarded in classification, 52. 

Aid: limits of missionary, 16. 

Aim of the Sunday-school, 18; what it 
should not be, 18; should be practical, 
108; should be the aim of the home, 26. 

Alternate reading, 81. 

American Sunday-school organizations, 13. 

American Sunday-school Union : its organ- 
ization, 13. 

Ancient and modern Sunday-school books, 
129. 

Anniversary of the Sunday-school, 151 ; its 
theme and uses, 152. 

Annual meetings, 121. 

Answers to questions to be encouraged, 91. 

Apostolic Church : how to teach its history, 
63. _ 

Appetite for truth, 90. 

Applications: to be planned, 89: legiti- 
mate, 89; appear by familiarity with the 
text, 89; not the easiest or most general, 
89; by way of suggestion, 90; ruts to be 
avoided, 90; how impressed, 60. 

Appropriate teaching for various depart- 
ments, 54. 

Approbation: love of, a worthy motive, 156. 

Artistic performances out of place, 147. 

Attendance: helped by parents, 24; at 
church services, how secured, 41, 100; of 
the pastor, 43; of older people, its effect, 
65; regular, necessary to good results, 
155- 



Attention to be secured, 90; what it is, 90. 

Baby talk, 55. 

Bell: how to be used, or not used, 80. 

Bibles furnished for the school, 139. 

Bible student: superintendent should be, 
76; why, 77. 

Biography of Christian heroes at home and 
abroad, 130. 

Blackboard: placed so as to separate 
primary class, 55; work should be simple 
and suggestive, 59; necessary, 139; how 
made or bought cheaply, 139; place on 
it the object of the charities, 141. 

Books of the Bible: names and classes, 111. 

Book study of the Bible: its value, 11; 
for v/hat class of students, 54. 

Borromeo, St. Carlo, 8. 

Branch Sunday-schools, 20. 

Brevity in opening exercises, 82. 

Brief prayers, 58. 

Calvin, John, 7. 

Canvassing neighborhoods made easy by 

the Home Department, 72. 
Capacity: to be regarded in classification, 

52. 
Catalogues and their value, 134. 
Catechism study, 9; proper use of, 10. 
Cautions regarding charities, 146. 
Central truth : how to be impressed, 60. 
Certificates for attendance, 155: bringing 

in scholars, 155; scholarship, 155; mem- 
bership, 123. 
Character: of a superintendent, 74; of a 

teacher, 85; contagious, 85; formed by 

giving, 140. 
Charts of kings, prophets, or Bible history, 

139; how made cheaply, 139. 



165 



i66 



The Model Sunday-school. 



Chasm between Church and Sunday-school, 
its origin, 12. 

Charities: as forming character, 140; as 
accomplishing missionary work, 140; the 
aggregate large, 140; training givers, 
140; wrong and right motives, 140; 
should be intelligent, 141 ; objects, how 
selected, 141; school should know to 
what it is giving, 141 ; a concrete object, 
142; work of a special missionary, 142; 
our national missionary societies, 142; 
knowledge necessary to love, 1 43 ; giving 
one's own money, 143; talent system, 
144; systematic giving, 144; giving dig- 
nified, 144; giving is worship, 145; ex- 
penses and charities, 145 ; church and 
Sunday-school giving, 145; scattering, 
146; overdoing, 146; class envelope, 
145; of the Sunday-school, sent through 
the church, 40. 

Cheapening religious literature, 139. 

Cheerful room for the primary department, 

55. 

Children's day: its origin, 150; growth, 
151 ; offerings for Sunday-school mis- 
sions, 151; the National Congregational 
Council, 151; customary services, 151. 

Choice of books, 131. 

Chorister: his duties, 50; dependence on, 
118; his choice of music, 119; his Chris- 
tian sentiments, 119. 

Christ: three years of his life discriminated, 
63; to whom he spoke in each case, 63; 
what his words meant to them, 63 ; the 
principles of his teaching rather than the 
precepts, 63; to be seen in the lesson, 64; 
the great Teacher, 97; the Friend and 
Saviour we need, 96. 

Christian Endeavor Committee, 71. 

Christian homes and Sunday-school train- 
ing, 28. 

Christless homes: how reached, 39. 

Christmas: its religious celebration, 150. 

Church and Sunday-school: the school 
outside the church, n; the church hos- 
tile, 11; the school tolerated, 12; the 
independence of the school accounted 
for, 12; the school recognized and 



adopted, 12; Sunday-school in the church, 
30; what the church should do for the 
school, 30; in controlling its organiza- 
tion, 30; electing its superintendent, 31; 
furnishing a place for it, 31 ; supplying 
money for its expenses, 34, 138; provid- 
ing and training teachers, 35; sympathy 
and appreciation, 36; using the school 
for instruction, 36; for development of 
power, 37; for evangelization, 38; rela- 
tions of the school to the church, 39. 

Church school: the ideal, 20, 22; how 
supported, 138; increased from Home 
Department, 72. 

Class: meaning of the word, 52. 

Classes for catechumens, 7. 

Classes: undisturbed during the teaching 
hour, 83; protected by the superin- 
tendent, 83. 

Class badge or banner, 154. 

Classical history for high school pupils, 64. 

Class record: its contents, 120; and value, 
120. 

Classification: of scholars, 52; by capacity, 
52; by age, 52; by social position, 52; 
of teachers, 53; by the grade of scholars 
they can teach best, 53; by the number 
they can care for, 53. 

Closing exercises: their nature, 84. 

Comfortable room for the primary depart- 
ment, 56. 

Cooperation of the home: how secured, 27. 

Commentaries : use of, 88, 94. 

Common exercises for whole school, 56. 

Concert: the Sunday-school, 147; its origin, 
147; not an exhibition, 147; not an 
artistic performance, t 47; related to the 
work of the school, 147; a service of the 
children, 348; its themes, 148; it should 
be biblical, 148; simple, 148; varied, 148; 
brief, 149; how frequent, 149. 

Concrete cases for Sunday-school giving, 
142, 

Confidence to be won, 91. 

Congregational Sunday-schools: aggregate 
of their charities, 140. 

Congregational Sunday-School and Pub- 
lishing Society: its origin, 14; its method 



Index. 



167 



in missionary work, 15; the Home De- 
partment, 70; books of fiction, 131; 
list of approved library books, 132; its 
missionary work, 146; Children's Day 
offering, 151. 

Connection of the lessons explained by 
teachers or superintendent, 83; studied 
by the scholar, 93. 

Consciences of children, 60. 

Contents of the Bible studied by normal 
classes, 69. 

Continued oversight necessary, 15. 

Conventions and institutes discriminated, 

157- 

Conversion alone not its main aim, 19. 
Counsel: Christian, given to parents, 27. 
Curiosity to be awakened, 92 ; how, 92. 

Dates and events, in. 

Day-school pupils and their needs, 63. 

Debating: to be avoided in class, 67; in 
teachers' meeting, 109. 

Definite: attainments to be required of the 
primary department, 61; conditions of 
promotion, 61; place for the pastor, 43; 
questions, 91. 

Definition of the Sunday-school, 17; when 
it meets, 17; what it studies, 17; teach- 
ing its main method, 17; not a substitute 
for home instruction, 18; or for other 
services of the church, 18. 

Definitions: of important truths at hand, 
95; often repeated, 111. 

Denominational comity, 14. 

Denominational loyalty, 124. 

Denominational work: its advantages, 14. 

Departments: the natural division, 54; the 
teaching appropriate for each, 54; pri- 
mary, 54, 55; intermediate, 54, 62; 
senior, 54, 64; normal, 54, 68; home, 
54, 70- 

Dictionaries, 88. 

Dignifying giving, 144. 

Dignity of general exercises, 65. 

Dike, Rev. Samuel \V., d.d., 70. 

Discipline of the school, helped by the 
teacher, 98. 

Discouraged teachers helped by common 
prayer, 108. 



Dismissal of school: quiet, 84; decorous, 
84. 

Disorderly teachers, 104. 

Doctrinal study, for what class, 54. 

Dress of Bible times, 62. 

Dressy teachers, 105. 

Duncan, William A., PH.D., 70. 

Dunning, Albert E., d.d., 70. . 

Duties : to parents taught in Sunday-school, 
27; of superintendent, 49; of secretary, 
49; of treasurer, 50; of librarian, 50; of 
chorister, 50; of executive committee, 
50; of teachers, 50. 

Earliest modern Sunday-schools, 8. 

Earning money to give, 144. 

Easter Sunday, 150. 

Election of officers, 49. 

Emotions of the young, not to be excited, 
61. 

Emulation as a motive for giving, 141. 

English Sunday-school organizations, 13. 

Entertainment not its aim, 18. 

Entertaining teachers, 104. 

Entertainments: the summer, 152; the 
winter, 152; instructive, 153. 

Evangelistic work of the Sunday-school: 
in its beginnings, for those outside the 
church, 13; unions of individuals, 13; 
English organizations, 13; American 
organizations, 13; Massachusetts Sun- 
day-school Union, 13; Congregational 
Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 
14; union in sentiment and separation 
for work, 14; comity between denomina- 
tions, 14; advantages of denominational 
work, 14; methods of missionary work, 
15; the canvass, 15; organization, 15; 
oversight, 15; instruction, 16; aid, and 
its limits, 16. 

Executive Committee: its duties, 50; its 
importance, 51 ; its records, 120. 

Exhibitions of smart children, 147. 

Exhortation or teaching, 64. 

Expenses of Sunday-school: provided by 
the church, 34; how provided in a poor 
church, 35; of church aided by Sunday- 
school, 40; and charities kept apart, 145. 

Eye to be addressed frequently, 59. 



i68 



The Model Sunday-school. 



Failures in teaching, three ways, 102. 

Faith of childhood, 60. 

Familiarity with the text of Scripture, 87. 

Fault found with the management, 98. 

Feelings of the young: not to be excited, 
61. 

Festival days: what they are, 149; Christ- 
mas, 150; Easter, 150; Thanksgiving, 
150; Children's Day, 150; the Anniver- 
sary, 151; the best hour, 154. 

Fiction for the library, 130. 

Fidelity to be distinguished, 156. 

Finances: of a church school, 138; of 
other than church schools, 138. 

Financial record : kept by superintendent, 
122; treasurer, 122; secretary, 122. 

Finding for one's self, 94. 

First centuries of the Church, 7. 

Fresh study gives fresh facts, 94. 

Frivolous tunes out of place, 117. 

General teaching in the primary depart- 
ment, 58. 

Golden Texts, 58, 59. 

Good-will toward teachers helped by 
parents, 24. 

Growth of the Sunday-school: in Great 
Britain, 9; in the world, 9; in Amer- 
ica, 9. 

Guidance needed for thought and study, 
92. 

Harvest festival, 152. 

Helping awakens love, 96. 

Histories: for whose study especially, 54; 
of periods in the Christian Church, 130. 

Historical fiction : its dangers, 130. 

Historical teaching, 63. 

Hobby-riding in a Bible class, 67. 

Hacker, Ludwig, 8. 

Holy Spirit : need of, 96, 108. 

Honesty in teaching: little ones, 60; 
young people, 66. 

Home: and Sunday-school, 24; how it 
can help the school, 24; in attendance, 
24; in good-will toward teachers, 25; in 
preparation of lessons, 25; in encourag- 
ing teachers, 25; in identity of aim, 26; 



how to secure its cooperation, 27; how 
the Sunday-school may help it, 27; 
training not hindered by the Sunday- 
school, 28; in irreligious homes, 28; in 
Christian homes, 28; the facts, 28; 
scholar, to be known in his home, 97; 
teacher's home to be open to scholars, 
97 ; study slips, 94 ; hymns good for the 
school, 117. 

Home Department, 70; a new develop- 
ment of the Sunday-school, 70; home 
study not new, 70; beginning of the 
movement, 70; adoption by various de- 
nominations, 70; its object, 71; its need, 
71; its method, 71; visitors, 71; not 
confined to those outside the church, 71 ; 
superintendent, 71; a department of the 
school, 72; its flexibility, 72; its ad- 
vantages, 72. 

Honorable mention, 156. 

Hostile attitude of the Church, n. 

Hymns: should be simple in expression, 
116; simple in sentiment, 116; of simple 
experience, 117; attention to the senti- 
ment, 117. 

Ideal to stimulate, not discourage, 74. 

Ignorant teachers, 103. 

Imagination of children, 59. 

Imparting knowledge, the power of, 86. 

Impersonal teachers, 103. 

Implements of Bible times, 62, 

Inductive methods for advanced students, 

126. 
Infant class: not a good name, 55. 
Information: fresh for young people, 65; 

as to the object of charities, 82; as to 

needed facts, 126. 
Institutes: the more local the better, 158; 

and why, 158; presence of an expert 

desirable, 158; two aspects of the work,. 

158; for superintendents, 158; topics, 

158; the chief value of, 159. 
Inspiration the distinguishing idea of the 

convention, 157. 
Irregular teachers, 105. 
Irreligious homes and Sunday-school 

training, 28. 



Index. 



169 



1 



Instruction in administration, 15; in 
teaching, 15; as to principles, 126; the 
main end of the Institute, 157. 

Intelligence in giving, 141; wise selection 
of objects, 141 ; knowing to what offer- 
ings are made, 141 . 

Intelligent instruction necessary to hold 
young people, 65. 

Intelligible exercises for primary depart- 
ment, 56. 

Interest to be aroused, 90. 

Intermediate Department: what promo- 
tion to it should mean, 62; the mode of 
teaching, 62; locate places, 62; illus- 
trate times and manners, 62; historical 
teaching, 63; teaching the life of Christ, 
63; teaching the words of Christ, 63; 
teaching about the Apostolic Church, 
63; teaching, not exhortation, 64. 

International Lesson System: its origin, 
10; what the lesson committee does, 
10; the plan, 10; what it cannot do, 10; 
the stimulus given by it, 10, 124; its 
use in different grades, 54. 

Juvenile literature of our times, 129. 

Keeping to the Bible, 67. 

Keeping teachers to a certain grade of 
classes, 53. 

Key to each book of the Bible, 87. 

Knox, John, 7. 

Knowledge: of Bible not the main aim of 
the Sunday-school, 18; necessary to 
love, 143; practical and scientific, 101. 

Larger classes with the best teachers, 53. 

Lawrence, Mr. Marion, 156. 

Leader of a normal class, qualifications, 
68. 

Leading questions, 91. 

Lesson helps: when to be used by the 
teacher, 88; using the questions printed 
in, 89, 91 ; not to be wholly depended 
on, 94; of denominational publishing 
houses, 124; tests of good helps, 125; 
they should stimulate, 125; not mechan- 
ical, 125; not too simple, 125; opening 



up the lesson, 125; they should instruct, 
126; how we study natural science, 126; 
information as to facts, 126; instruction 
as to principles, 126; they should edify, 
127; Bible a guidebook, 127; scriptural, 
127; the traditional reading, 127; not 
fanciful, 127; spiritual, 127; their aim, 
130; their atmosphere, 130; poorest 
place for economy, 139. 

Lesson themes, 93. 

Lesson work for the week, 93. 

Letters of dismission, 123. 

Letter: present by, 99. 

Library: of the Sunday-school, 128; its 
importance, 128; two kinds of, 128; 
where books are plenty, 128; where 
they are scarce, 129; the old stigma, 
129; tests of a good book, 129; books 
helpful in Bible study, 129; or in the 
Christian life, 130; biography, 130;. 
histories, 130; historical fiction, 130; 
fiction and of what kind, 130; how to 
test a book, 131; should be above tastes 
of readers, 131 ; who should choose the 
books, 131 ; the character of the library 
committee, 131; how to select, 132; 
previous examination. 132; the libra- 
rian, 132; library clerk and his duties, 
134; charging books, methods, 134; 
catalogues of, 134; teacher and the> 
135; for teachers, 135. 

Librarian: duties of, 50; importance of 
the office, 132; two bad choices, 132, 
133; a good choice, 133; his true func- 
tion, 133; not a mere library clerk, 134. 

Light in Sunday-school room, 32. 

Locating lessons, 64. 

London Sunday-school Union, 13. 

Love: to God, to the Bible, and to the 
scholar necessary to a teacher, 85; 
secret of Christian, 96; stories, bad 
and good, 131; as a motive for giving, 
141. 

Loyalty to the church : in the superintend- 
ent, 77; in the teacher, 100; to the 
denomination, 124. 

Loyola, Ignatius, 8. 

Luther, Martin, 7. 



170 



The Model Sunday-school. 



Manners of Bible times, 62. 

Maps: their use, 62; of Bible lands, 139; 
how to make, 139. 

Marching time for tunes, 118. 

Marginal readings of Revised Version, 
127. 

Massachusetts Sabbath-school Union, 13. 

Meaning : of new hymns to be explained, 
57; of Scripture to those to whom it 
first came, 63. 

Meetings always with prayer, 107. 

Memory fixed by repetition, in. 

Memorizing Scripture, 9. 

Membership of Sunday-schools in the 
world, 9; of Sunday-schools in our land, 
9; of a school, 49. 

Method of the Home Department, 71. 

Mission: Sunday-schools, 20; and branch 
Sunday-schools, how they differ, 21 ; 
work, its reflex influence, 38; and other 
schools, how supported, 138. 

Missionary: work, methods of Sunday- 
school, 15; aid, its limits, 16. 

Model Sunday-school rooms, 32. 

Money: for what it should be expended, 
139; full equipment of the school, 139; 
ingenuity takes the place of, 139. 

Motion songs, 57. 

Motives in giving, right and wrong, 140. 

Music in the Sunday-school: the primary 
department, 56; teaching the words, 57; 
explaining the meaning, 57; motion 
songs, 57; whisper songs, 57; standard 
hymns, 57, 119; practicing and praising 
distinguished, 80, 119; its object, 116; 
its themes, 116; hymns, 116; tunes 
should aid the words, 117; animated yet 
serious, 118; the spirit of worship, 118; 
the chorister, 118; his choice of music, 
119; his sympathy with Christian senti- 
ments, 119; learning a new tune, 119. 

National missionary societies, 142. 
Natural division of classes, 54. 
Natural teachers, 101. 
Needs of eye, ear, and lungs in Sunday- 
school room, 32. 
New class, a teacher's duty to, 100. 



New families, how reached, 38. 

New scholars, 99. 

New tunes, how to learn them, 119. 

New York Sunday-school Union, 13. 

Normal class, 68; training necessary, 68, 
101 • best time for meeting, 68 ; a limited 
time each year, 68 ; the leader, 68 ; study 
of the Bible, 68; study of the principles 
of teaching, 69; helpful books, 69; in 
the teachers' meeting, no. 

Notices: what they should include, 82; 
manner of giving them, 82. 

Object: of the Home Department, 71; for 
which each book was written, 87; of 
questioning, 92; of Sunday-school mu- 
sic, 116. 

Offering: not penny collection, 144. 

Officers of a Sunday-school, 49. 

Older boys: how kept in the school, 37. 

Old Testament contains principles of the 
Sunday-school, 7. 

Order in the school, on what it depends : 
in the superintendent, 75; how secured 
in the school, 76. 

Orders of Sunday-schools, various, 20. 

Organic association with the Christian 
Church through the Home Department, 

73. 

Organization: of the Sunday-school, 43; 
purpose of organization, 43; value of a 
written constitution, 43; a model con- 
stitution, 49; careful records of, 121; of 
missionary Sunday-schools, 15. 

Origin of the Sunday-school : the Old Tes- 
tament, 7; the early Christian Church, 
7 ; the periods of spiritual revival, 7 ; 
the seventeenth century, 8; the earliest 
Sunday-school of modern times, 8; 
Robert Raikes' school, 8; why date back 
to this, 8; outside of the church, 11; 
for those without the church, 13. 

Overdoing Sunday-school giving, 146. 

Oversight, continuous, necessary, 15. 

Paid Sunday-school teachers, 8. 
Papers for the Sunday-school, 136; should 
convey Christian and moral truth, 136; 



Index. 



171 



vivacity, 136; mechanically good, 137; 
if for the little ones, should need no 
translation, 137. 

Parents the first teachers, 24; may en- 
courage Sunday-school teachers, 24. 

Parental faithfulness stimulated by the 
Sunday-school, 27. 

Paragraph study of the Bible, 10. 

Participation in general exercises, 98. 

Pastor: his place in the school, 42; his 
attendance, 42 ; his part in the worship, 
43; a teacher, 44; a substitute teacher, 
44; his limitations, 45; in the pulpit, 
45; in the prayer-meeting, 46; with the 
superintendent, 46; in his pastoral 
visits, 46; in the teachers' meeting, 47. 

Paul's plan for giving, 144. 

Pioneer Sunday-school, 21. 

Pilgrim Quarterlies, 93, 113. 

Place for all in the school, 37. 

Plan of temperance organization, 161. 

Planning: questions, 88; illustrations, 89; 
applications, 89; definite, 90. 

Practical nature of the Bible, 127. 

Practicing tunes and praising God, 80. 

Prayer: in the -Sunday-school, for the 
primary department, 57; simple, 57; 
repeated after the teacher, 57 ; brief, 58; 
reverent, 58; for the school by the 
superintendent, 78; its qualities, 81; its 
leader, 81; attitude, 82; its spirit, 82; 
its unselfishness, 82; preparation for, 
82; to follow gifts, 144. 

Prayerfulness in the teacher's prepara- 
tion, 86. 

Prayer-meeting: for teachers, 107; for 
Christian or thoughtful scholars, 108; 
why to be h-.ld, 108. 

Preaching and teaching: how they differ, 
17, 86. 

Preaching to parents, 46. 

Preparation for teaching: prayerful, 86; 
general preparation begun early, 86; 
familiarity with lesson texts, 87 ; knowl- 
edge of the particular book, 87; par- 
ticular preparation, 87; preparation for 
the class, 88; planning, 88; saturation, 
90; by the superintendent, 78, 80; of 
room, etc., 80; of heart, 80, 



Primary Department: age limits, 54; the 
name, 55; how to address it, 55; the 
place, 55, 58, 65; the general exercises, 
56; the singing, 56; the prayers, 57; the 
general teaching, 58; variety, 58; drill, 
58; repetition, 58; addressing the eye, 
59; imagination, 59; object teaching, 
59; surprise, 59; review, 59; the class 
teaching, 60; its subject, 60; the story 
element, 60; responsibility of the work, 
60; religious needs of childhood, 60; 
faith, 60; conscience, 60; sympathy, 60; 
feeling, 60; what this department should 
accomplish, 61; formal promotion, 61; 
the time and its distribution, 62; a 
method for giving, 144; recognition for 
knowing Golden Texts for the quarter, 
156. 

Previous examination of books, 132. 

Principles or precepts, 63. 

Principles of teaching studied by normal 
classes, 69. 

Proof texts: their abuse, 10, 66; to be 
studied in historical order, 67. 

Promise to united prayer, 108. 

Promotion from primary department, 61. 

Promotion marked by a certificate, 156. 

Public school grading, 52. 

Pulpit: remembering the Sunday-school in 
the prayers, notices, sermon, singing, 45. 

Punctual attendance of the superintend- 
ent, 79. 

Qualifications: of a superintendent, 75; of 
a teacher, 85. 

Qualities of a good Sunday-school book, 
129, 130. 

Quarterly reviews, 113. 

Questioning: to be planned, 88; using 
those prepared by others, 88, 91 ; on 
familiar things, 91 ; definite questions, 
91 ; not leading, 91 ; not tricky, 91 ; all 
answers to be encouraged, 91 ; main 
object of, 92 ; from the class, invited, 94. 

Reading: taught in the first Sunday- 
schools, 7; by the leader, 81; respon- 
sively, 81; alternately, 81; by all to- 
gether, 81. 



172 



The Model Sunday-school. 



Records of the Sunday-school, 120; of the 
class, 120; attendance, 120; contribu- 
tion, 120; their value, 120; of the ex- 
ecutive committee, 120; should be sep- 
arate, 120; what they should cover, 120; 
of the school, 121; organization, 121; 
register of members, 121; annual meet- 
ings, 121; attendance for each Sunday, 
121; individual attendance, 121; finan- 
cial record, 121; for annual report, 122; 
by the treasurer, 122; by the secretary, 
122; qualities of a good secretary, 122; 
use of by the superintendent, 122; by 
the visiting committee, 123; by the pas- 
tor, 123; a Sunday-school scrapbook, 
123; certificates, etc., 123. 

Recognitions: why serviceable, 154; for 
attendance, 155; for recruiting, 155; for 
scholarship, 156; should be inexpensive 
and simple, 156; to be adopted gradu- 
ally, 156. 

Refractory scholars: how dealt with, 100; 
patience, 100; secure their help, 100; 
expulsion the last measure, 100; then 
win them back, 100. 

Register of officers, teachers, and schol- 
ars, 121. 

Religious needs of childhood, 60. 

Removals of scholars, 100. 

Repeating Scripture in unison, 8r. 

Repeating prayers after the teacher, 57. 

Repetition necessary to memory of facts, 
112; in normal class teaching, 68. 

Report made to the church from Sunday- 
school, 31. 

Reputation of a superintendent, 74. 

Responsive reading, 80. 

Restlessness: how prevented, 58. 

Reverence: taught by the attitude in 
prayer, 58; in the superintendent, why 
needed, 76; contagious, 76; in singing 
hymns, 118. 

Reviews: their necessity, in; of facts, 
in; varied, in; of truths and teach- 

ft ings, in; new views, 112; weekly 
reviews, how conducted, 112; should 
be constant, 112; scriptural, 112; of 
Golden Texts, 112; topical, 113; for the 



whole school, 113; quarterly reviews, 
113; of texts, 113; period, 113; facts, 
113; teachings, 113; methods, 113; con- 
structing a new lesson, 113; classifying 
people, 114; the connected story, 114; 
distributing written questions, 114; 
secret of a good review, 114; written 
reviews and their advantages, 114. 

Revivals of spiritual life and teaching the 
young, 7. 

Revised Version of great value, 127. 

Rewards or recognitions, 154. 

Robert Raikes, 8. 

Roll of Honor, 154. 

Rooms for the Sunday-school: the best 
the church can provide, 31; light, 32; 
ventilation, 32; separate, 32, 55, 58, 65; 
model, 32; Tompkins Avenue Church, 
Brooklyn, 32; screens, 32; for the 
primary department, 55; cheerful, 55; 
comfortable, 56. 

Ruts to be avoided in teaching, 90. 

Salutation in Scripture words for opening, 
80. 

Saturation in the lesson, 90. 

Scattering Sunday-school charities, 146. 

" School " not an objectionable term, 65. 

School records: their contents, 121. 

Scrapbook for the Sunday-school, 123. 

Screens to divide departments, 32, 55. 

Seats: low for the little ones, 56; in 
church for scholars, 82. 

Secret of Christian love, 96. 

Secretary: his duties, 49; his qualifica- 
tions, 122. 

Seek-further questions, 93. 

Senior Department: Bible stories, 64; lo- 
cating lessons, 64; wider range for 
teaching, 64; study of a period, 64; 
normal work, 64; classical history, 64; 
how to hold the young men, 64; topical 
study, 66; biblical theology, 66; invite 
questioning, 67; consult the wish Df the 
class, 67; a debating society, 67; keep 
to the Bible, 67. 

Sentence study, 87. 

Sentiment of hymns to be noticed, 117. 



Index. 



173 



Sentiments appropriate for children's 

hymns, 57. 
Separate room for the primary department, 

33, 55- 

Seventeenth century Sunday-schools, 8. 

Shame: as a motive for giving, 141. 

Shy young Christians: how helped, 136. 

Signals : simple and quiet, 80. 

Silence an indication of reverence, 76. 

Simple hymns and tunes for primary de- 
partment, 56; simple prayers, 57. 

Simplicity of hymns, 116. 

Singing: see Music. 

Social position : how regarded in classifica- 
tion, 52. 

Special fields for Sunday-school giving, 
142. 

Spending money for children, 143. 

Spirituality of teaching influenced by 
prayer, 108. 

Standard hymns, 57. 

Stimulation rather than testing, the object 
of questioning, 92. 

Story element in teaching, 60, 64. 

Stories of the Bible for what class, 54. 

Study : of the lesson helped by parents, 
24; of a period, 64; of those you are to 
teach, 88; by the class, how secured, 
92; by the teacher's study, 93; by his 
expectation, 93: by his assignment of 
special topics, 93. 

Subject of primary class teaching, 60. 

Substitute teachers, 83: a substitute class, 
83; difficulty of providing, 83; in ad- 
vance, 99. 

Summer assemblies, 159. 

Sunday, a model, 37. 

Sunday-school and the church, 39; should 
recognize its dependence, 39; should 
contribute if necessary, 40; should send 
charities through the church, 40; should 
secure attendance, 41 ; should add to its 
membership, 42. 

Superintendent: his duties, 49; the ideal 
to encourage him, 74; his character, 74; 
his reputation, 74; qualifications, 75; 
will, 75; reverence, 76; Bible student, 
76; tact, 77; loyalty, jj; out of school : 



prayer, 78; planning, 78; study of 
teachers and scholars, 78; aid them in 
all ways, 79; in the school: attend be- 
fore the appointed time, 79; in the wor- 
ship, 80; calling to order, 80; a saluta- 
tion, 80; practicing music and singing 
hymns distinguished, 80; Scripture read- 
ing, 81; using the book, 81; memoriz- 
ing Scripture, 81; prayer, 82; notices, 
82; naming the object of charities, 82; 
the teaching time, 82; connection- with 
the preceding lesson, 83; supplemen- 
tary lesson, 83; procuring substitutes, 
83; protecting teachers from interrup- 
tion, 83; shall he teach, 84; closing 
services, 84: brief review, 84; a quiet 
dismissal, 84; his use of the Sunday- 
school records, 122; his duty to absentee 
teachers, 123; institute for superintend- 
ents, 158. 

Supplementary lessons: their themes, 83; 
when to be taught, 83. 

Sympathy: for teachers from the church, 
36; needed by children, 60. 

Systems of study : teaching to read, 9 : 
memorizing Scripture, 9; catechism, 9; 
proof texts, 10; paragraph study, 10; 
uniform lessons, 10; book study, 11; 
advantages of this last, 11; less impor- 
tant than good teachers, 102. 

Systematic giving, 144. 

Tact needed for the administration of the 
school, 77. 

Talent system, 144. 

Teacher, the Sunday-school: his duties, 
50; personal influence, 85; character, 
85; should love God, 85; should love 
the Bible, 85; should love scholars, 85: 
apt to teach, 86; preaching and teach- 
ing, 86; preparation, 86; teaching: 
securing attention and interest, 90; 
winning confidence, 91 ; questioning, 
91 ; awakening curiosity, 92 ; guiding 
thought and study, 92; securing study, 
92; expecting study, 93; special topics 
for study, 93; connection between the 
lessons, 93; lesson work for the week, 



174 



The Model Sunday-school. 



93 ; fresh information to impart, 94 ; defi- 
nitions, 95; influencing the will, 95; 
need of the Holy Spirit, 96 ; as a friend, 
96; secret of Christian love, 96; bearing 
class on his heart, 97; knowing scholars, 
97 ; Jesus the great Teacher, 97 ; in the 
discipline of the school, 98; prompt attend- 
ance, 98; an example of order, 98; 
active participation in general exercises, 
98; loyal to the management, 98; receiv- 
ing or transferring scholars, 99; helping 
the librarian, 99, 136; providing a substi- 
tute, 99; attending meetings, 99; watch- 
ing attendance, 99; with those leaving 
the school, 100; taking a new class, 100; 
dealing with the refractory, 100; loyal to 
the church, 100; training teachers, 101; 
normal classes, 101 ; teachers' meeting, 
101; natural teachers, 101; three ways 
to fail, 102; more than systems, 102; 
hindrances among, 103; unconverted, 
103; impersonal, 103; unexpectant, 103; 
ignorant, 103; entertaining, 104; dis- 
orderly, 104; unprepared, 104; irregu- 
lar, 105; dressy, 105; should know what 
the scholars read, 135; a library for, 135. 

Teachers' meeting: its importance, 107; 
for devotion, 107; regular or occasional, 
108; reasons for holding, 108 ; for study, 
109; less common than formerly, and 
why, 109; not for original preparation of 
the lesson, 109; normal work, 109; for 
business, no; cautions, no; for ac- 
quaintance, no; how often and where, 
no; for conference with the superin- 
tendent, 79; for bringing difficult ques- 
tions, 101. 

Temperance: in the Sunday-school, 160; 
Sunday-school not a temperance society, 
160; Sunday-school under obligation to 
promote temperance, 160; should be 
taught in principle and applications, 
160; not in regular quarterly lesson, 160; 
organization, 161; should be inclusive, 
161; a plan suggested, 161; object of 
the organization, 161 ; a declaration of 
purpose, 162 ; release from membership, 
162; a present purpose, 162. 



Test of a library book, 131. 

Text-books, 101. 

Thanksgiving concert, 150. 

Themes of Sunday-school music, 116. 

Thoughtful scholars helped, 109. 

Time: length for younger children, 62; 
how to be distributed, 62; best for a 
normal class, 68; needed for digesting 
truth, 87. 

Toleration of Sunday-school by the 
church, 12. 

Tompkins Avenue Congregational Sun- 
day-school Hall, 33. 

Topical study of the Bible: its value, 66; 
its dangers, 66. 

Training, teachers, 35, 68. 

Transfer agents for charities, 143. 

Transfer of scholars, 99. 

Treasurer: his duties, 50. 

Tricky questions, 91. 

Trumbull, Rev. H. Clay, d.d., testimony 
as to home training and the Sunday- 
school, 28. 

Two kinds of libraries, 128. 

Types and illustrations, 127. 

Unconverted teachers, 103. 

Unexpectant teachers, 103. 

Uniform lesson system : see International. 

Union Sunday-school, 21 ; where needed, 
14, 21; why seldom needed, 22; what 
they lack, 22; when injurious, 22. 

Union and separation, 14. 

University extension idea, 70. 

Unprepared teachers, 104. 

Use of the Sunday-school by the church, 36. 

Use of the Bible: how to secure, 81; by 
the superintendent, 81 ; not essential to 
have the whole book always, 81. 

Vacations : covered by the Home Depart- 
ment, 73. 
Variety in the primary department, 58. 
Various orders of Sunday-schools, 20. 
Ventilation in Sunday-school room, 131. 
Visitors for the Home Department, 71. 

Weekly reviews, 112. 



Index. 175 



Welcoming early comers, 80. Words of hymns to be taught, 57. 

Wesley, John, 9. Work: simple Christian, provided by the 

Whisper songs, 57. Home Department, 72. 

Who should be in the Sunday-school and Written answers to questions, 94. 
why, 19. 

Why date back to Raikes' school, 8. 

ix7u j ^ j c j Xavier, Francis, 8. 
why pastors do not do more in Sunday- 
school, 45. 
Will: needed by a superintendent, 75; in- Young men: how to hold them in the 
dications of its possession, 75 ; how cul- Sunday-school, 64; by attendance of 
tivated, 75; to be influenced, 95 ; depend- older people, 65; by dignity of general 
ence of character on, 95; how it is influ- exercises, 65; by instruction adapted 
enced, 95. to them, 65; by honest intellectual treat- 
Word study, 87. ment, 66. 



npHE PILQRin SUNDAY=SCHOOL RECORDS . . 

The Pilgrim Class Record, or Class Card, is kept by the teacher, and gives 
the attendance of each individual scholar as well as summaries and averages of both class 
attendance and contributions. 

Note. — For the accommodation of such secretaries as prefer to keep the attendance 
of the individual scholars, we publish the Secretary's Class Book. We do not recom- 
mend its use, however. 

The Pilgrim Sunday-school Record Book is kept by the Secretary-. It 
records the membership of the school (officers, teachers, and scholars), and constitution 
of each class; the attendance and contributions of each class for every Sunday of the 
year; and it contains the weekly, quarterly, and annual reports, and also the treasurer's 
account. 

The Pilgrim Roll of Memhership records the names of all the members of 
the school with such f icts regarding each as are of permanent value. The book is large 
enough to last a school for ten years. 

The Pilgrim Library Record is a common-sense method of taking care of the 
books of the Library, not the scholars of the school. 

A simple, practical, and labor-saving system of keeping the records of a Sunday-school 
should be based on the same principles that govern good bookkeeping in a mercantile 
house. The work ought not to be done twice by two different people, but, on the other 
hand, each part of it should be performed by the one who can do it best, and to whom 
that special portion is of value as a record. The Pilgrim Books are made with the follow- 
ing points in view : — 

First — The Teacher should know the individuals of his class, and all individual 
statistics are of value only to the Teacher. 

Second — The Secretary needs to know all facts concerning the classes of the school, 
and such statistics of the school as the class statistics combined will furnish. These are 
of value for the purpose of weekly, monthly, quarterly, and finally and principally, the 
Annual Report. They are not, however, of permanent value, and when the Annual 
Report has been made, the Secretary's yearly Record may be laid aside, the permanent 
portion of it having been incorporated in the Annual Report. 

Third — The Roll of Membership is of permanent value and should, therefore, be kept 
in a separate book (not in the yearly Record), and in connection with the names the 
facts which have to do with the scholar's history, so far as his connection with the school 
is concerned, should also be preserved. 

Note. — As some schools may not care to adopt in full the system incorporated in this 
Series, we print in the Pilgrim Sunday-school Record Book a register of members 
which may be used if the Secretary desires, so dispensing with the Pilgrim Roll of Mem- 
bership. We also publish a Condensed Sunday-school Record Book for Mission Schools. 



PRICE LIST. 

(Postage is prepaid on Sunday-school Requisites.) 

Pilgrim Class Card. 18 names, 4 cents; per hundred, $3.00. 

Pilgrim Class Record (book). 15 names, 5 cents; per dozen, 50 cents. 30 names, 7 
cents; per dozen, 75 cents. 

Pilgrim Secretary's Class Book (for Schools not using Teachers' Class Record). Two 
sizes. Thirty-five classes, 30 cents. Seventy-five classes, 50 cents. 

Pilgrim Sunday-school Record Book. Two sizes. Thirty-five classes, $1.00. Seventy-, 
five classes, $1.50. 

Pilgrim Membership Roll. Two sizes. 1,500 names, $2.50. 2,000 names, $3.00. 

Pilgrim Library f ecord. Three sizes. 650 books, $1.25. 1,050 books, $1.75. 1,600 
books, $2.50. 

Pilgrim Library Card. Price, 1 cent; per hundred, 50 cents. 

Pilgrim Wallet. (Class collections.) Price, 5 cents; per dozen, 50 cents. 

Pilgrim Sermon Record. Leatherette. Price, 5 cents; per hundred, $5.00. 

Condensed Sunday-school Record Book. (For four years.) Price, 50 cents. 

Admission Blank for Primary Department. Card, one fcld, red border. Price, 2 cents. 

Dismission Certificate for Primary Department. Size, 6 by 9 inches. Colored ink. 
Price, 5 cents. The same, for Intermediate Department. Size, 6 by 9 inches. Col- 
ored ink. Price, 5 cents. 

BOSTON AND CHICAGO.: 

Congregational ^unUap^cljool anU Publishing ^ocietp* 



THE PILGRin LIBRARY RECORD 



WHY waste time with old and ineffective methods of keeping the records of your 
Sunday-school Library? 

IS IT the business of the librarians to keep track of the scholars in the school or of 
the BOOKS in the library? 

THAT you want the facts about every book is evident. Why then make your record 
tell what books a certain scholar takes from the library rather than what scholars take 
each BOOK? 

MANY APPRECIATE the importance of the system of keeping a record by 
BOOKS and not by scholars, and have arranged at considerable expense mechanical 
devices which in a measure answer the purpose; but all such plans are open to serious 
objections. 

THE PILGRIM LIBRARY RECOR D furnishes a perfect system based upon the 
above principle of keeping a record of the BOOKS. It is the only common-sense Record 
Book now published. It will save one half the time of your librarians, and will keep, at 
the absolute minimum of labor, a perfect record of every book in the library. The 
Record is manufactured in the best manner from first quality Scotch ledger paper, bound 
in heavy boards, cloth back. 

THE EXPLANATORY NOTE 

which prefaces the Pilgrim Library Record is as follows: — 

NOTE. 

The Pilgrim Library Record should be used to keep a record of EACH BOOK in the 
library, showing who takes it out, and how long it is kept before being returned. 

Each scholar is assigned a Library Number. The Names and Library Numbers of the 
scholars should be properly entered in the List at the end of this book. This List need 
not necessarily be rewritten every year, but, if desired, the pages containing it can be 
removed from the old book and placed in the new one. 

The Pilgrim Library Cards have spaces conveniently arranged for the scholar's 
Library Number, his Name, and Class Number. 

Explanation. The figures in the horizontal lines of the Library Record, twenty-five 
on each page, represent library books. In the perpendicular column, under these num- 
bers, are spaces for every Sunday of the year. A number written into one of these spaces 
records the fact that on that particular Sunday the scholar whose number there appears 
took the book from the library. And the record thus stands until the return of the book, 
when a line is drawn through the scholar's number, and the charge to him is thus canceled. 

By this method it is always possible to tell at a glance : — i . What books are out of the 
library any particular week. 2. Who took them out. 3. When they were taken out, 
and how long they have been kept. 

It will facilitate the work of the librarians if all the crediting of returned books be done 
at one time, the books being first arranged, and then checked off upon the Record in 
numerical order. In making the new selection called for by tbe library cards, either 
allow the books to remain on the library shelves, pulled forward a little, with the proper 
Library Card inserted, or place them together in numerical order. Charge all the books 
at one time, beginning with the earliest number and proceeding in order. This having 
been done, assort the books according to Class Numbers as they appear on the Library 
Cards, and distribute to the school. 



BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 

Congregational ISmnUap^cIjool anfc ^ttblislnttff £>ocietj>* 



'HE PILGRIM LESSON HELPS 



Thoroughly Graded. First to adopt New and Improved Methods. So planned as to 
induce Scholars to Study. Best of all the Lesson Helps on our International Series o* 
Sunday-school Lessons. No paid advertisements in the Quarterlies and Lesson Leaves. 



The Inductive System. Introduced into the Pilgrim Series with the third quar- 
ter, 1890, the Inductive System as worked out in it has proved very popular. Why? 
Because the scholar is incited to study — likes his lessons, instead of being indifferent. 
The Lesson Work for the Week gives him something to do each day which he is inter- 
ested in doing. The Word and Phrase Studies tell him those things which he would not 
be likely to see in the lesson text. The Lesson Questions are not mere perfunctory ques- 
tions on the text, but make him think and reason for himself. The Lesson Themes carry 
his thinking and reasoning into the realm of doctrine. The Seek-Further Questions are 
alluring to those who like to answer hard questions. These questions have led many to 
study their lessons with zest. The Pilgrim Series tells the scholar what he needs to be 
told, but does not attempt to do his studying or thinking for him. 

Home Study Slips. These carry the Inductive System one stage further. They 
contain questions, with blanks for written answers to be brought into the class. The 
teacher has in his hand, therefore, the evidence of the scholar's study, and can see just 
wherein he needs help. 

The Review Examination Papers. Reviews and the study of the lessons 
have been greatly helped by the issue of these questions for written answers at the close 
of the quarter. The questions are in two grades, intermediate and advanced. 

The Outline Bible Studies. These Studies are Supplemental to the Interna- 
tional Lessons. They aim to make good its deficiencies. They are upon the Books of 
the Bible, its Geography, its History, its Institutions, the Gospels, and the Life of Christ. 
Twelve lessons in all. One lesson each quarter. Therefore, extending through three 
years. They exact but little during a quarter, but the little outlay brings in a rich 
accumulation of Bible knowledge. The Studies are published on the fourth and fifth 
pages of the Quarterlies, but can be had in leaflet form, each part containing four lessons. 

Study of the Life of Jesus the Christ. — Chronological, Inductive, Outline. 
In fifty-two lessons (three grades) ; edited by M. C. Hazard. Especially commended 
for its outlines, by which the facts are easily memorized in their order. The characteris- 
tics of the different periods of the Saviour's ministry are clearly shown. The textual 
helps are of the best. Home study questions, with spaces for written answers. Finely 
illustrated, and with first-class maps. Sample lessons free. Bound in boards, cloth back, 
30 cents; in quarterly parts, 8 cents. 



PRICE LIST. 

Monday Club Sermons. Annual. $1.25. 

The Pilgrim Teacher. Monthly. Per year, 60 cents; clubs, 50 cents. 

Pilgrim Quarterlies. Senior, per year, 20 cents. Intermediate, 20 cents; without music, 

16 cents. Junior, per year, 16 cents. 
Examination Papers and Certificates. Papers, $1.00 per 100 copies. 
Outline Bible Studies. (Supplemental.) Four parts, three studies in each part. Each 

part, 4 cents. 
Home Study Slips. Issued Quarterly. Per year, 8 cents. 
Pilgrim Lesson Leaves. Senior and Intermediate, per year, 8 cents. 
Little Pilgrim Lesson Papers. No advertisements. Weekly. 25 cents per year. 
Little Pilgrim Lesson Pictures. 16 cents per year. 

Pilgrim Children's Services. Quarterly. Per year, 20 cents; single numbers, 5 cents. 
The Well-Spring. Weekly edition: 60 cents; clubs, 50 cents. Semi-monthly edition: 

30 cents; clubs, 24 cents. Monthly edition: 15 cents; clubs, 12 cents. 
The Mayflower. Weekly. 30 cents per copy; clubs, 25 cents. 
Pilgrim Almanac. Annual. 3 cents; 100 copies, $2.00. 
Pilgrim Golden Text Book. 32 pages. 25 cents per 100 copies. 



BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 

Congregational Smntoap-ikljool anU ^ttblisbinff i&>ocietp* 



'UNDAY=5CH00L PAPERS 



We believe in the policy of furnishing first-class papers for the Sunday-school. Cheap 
papers are an abomination. They lower the respect of the young for the Sunday-school 
just at the time when it should be the greatest. There never should come a time when 
they can look upon the Sunday-school with contempt. Good papers will help to con- 
serve their good opinion of it. Therefore, give them papers well printed, on good paper, 
with fine illustrations, and well edited. Such papers are 

THE WELL-SPRING, for young people, but liked by the old, who find it like a 
refreshing draught of sparkling water. The Well-Spring has special numbers almost 
every month, devoted to Easter, Children's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Temperance, 
Missions, etc. Nothing better — nothing quite so good. (Tn clubs, 50 cents.) 

THE MAYFLOWER. The young, cheery, bright-faced little sister of The 
Well-Spring. Printed in large type, with attractive illustrations, and just adapted to the 
little folks, who eagerly look for its coming. Fragrant memories of their childhood will 
those have who receive The Mayflower each week. (In clubs, 25 cents.) 



'HAUTAUQUA NORflAL UNION 



TEXT-BOOKS. — Outline Normal Lessons, Hurlbut. Bible Studies, Dunning. 
Studies in Four Gospels. Sunday-school Science, Holmes. Each volume in paper, 25 
cents net: cloth, 40 cents net. 

REQUIRED READINGS. — The Bible the Sunday-school Text-book, Holborn, 
75 cents. Primer of Christian Evidences, Redford, 75 cents. Seven Laws of Teach- 
ing, Gregory, cloth, 65 cents; paper, 25 cents. Progress of Doctrine, Bernard, $1.00. 
The Young Teacher, Groser, cloth, 75 cents; paper, 25 cents. Prices net. 



1ST OF BOOKS 



RECOMMENDED TO TEACHERS by the Sunday-school Teachers' Examining 
Board, which represents the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist-Episcopalian, as well as 
our own denomination. Our Secretary, Rev. Geo. M. Boynton, d.d., is one of the Board. 

1. The Bible. A. Hovey. Paper, 20 cents. 

2. Outline Normal Lessons. J. L. Hurlbut. Cloth, 40 cents; paper, 25 cents. 

3. Bible Studies. .A. E. Dunning. Cloth, 40 cents; paper, 25 cents. 

4. Westminster Normal Outlines, Junior course. J. A. Worden. Paper, 20 cents. 

5. Westminster Normal Outlines, Middle conrse, J. A. Worden. Paper, 50 cents. 

6. Studies in the Four Gospels. J. L. Hurlbut. Cloth, 40 cents; paper, 25 cents. 

7. Studies in Old Testament History. J. L. Hurlbut. Cloth, 40 cents; paper, 25 cents. 

8. How to Teach the Bible. J. M. Gregory. Paper, 15 cents. 

9. The Seven Laws of Teaching. J. M. Gregory. Cloth, 65 cents; paper, 25 cents. 
Several of the above-named books cover the same ground; thus, Nos. 1, 2, 3 contain 

general views of the Bible. Nos. 4, 5, 6 are upon topics in the New Testament. No. 3, 
as well as No. 7, takes up Bible history. No. 2 contains outlines on the Sunday-school. 
Nos. 8 and 9 suggest principles and methods of teaching. 



HOilE DEPARTHENT REQUISITES 



The aim of the Home Department is to promote the study of the Bible in the home, 
in connection with the Sunday-school, among those who for any reason do not attend its 
sessions. The plan is to form Home Classes, the aggregation of which shall make up 
the Home Department of the Sunday-school. A class may consist of one only, if no 
more can be added to it. In many cases it will be possible to have all the members of the 
family not already in the Sunday-school enrolled in a Home Class. The following 
simple forms will greatly facilitate the organization of a Home Department. 

Letter (Form B), Membership Card (Form C), Report Card (Form D), per hundred, 
$1.00; per set, 2 cents; per hundred sets, $1.50. 

Instructions to Visitors (Form E), with Visitors' Report, per hundred, $1.00. 

Collection Boxes (can be folded for mailing), 3 cents each; per hundred, $2.50. 

Visitors' Record, $1.00 per hundred. 

BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 

Conffrcffationai gmnUap^cIjool anti Publishing; Society* 



HLGRin MUSIC 



Edited by JOHN W. TUFTS. 

Publisher's Note. — Mr. Tufts is one of our besl known musicians, and a com- 
poser of classical attainments . He writes from a standpoint fully in sympathy with 
the tastes of young people, yet with scientific accuracy and with due regard to the 
range of children s voices. As a director of church music for many years, he has 
had unusual experience in adaptation of music to words, and excellence in this 
direction is a special feature of the book. 



" PILGRIM SONGS" contains the Best of the old Hymns and Tunes; a large 
proportion of new material; Special Hymns for special occasions. 

Characteristic features : — 

Music and Words of first quality; every Tune a melody; every Hymn of acknowl- 
edged literary merit. 

Music and words adapted to each other. 

The music within range of children's voices, and of a character to appeal to children's 
tastes. 

Perfect in paper, type, and binding. Distinctively a Sunday-school Music Book. 

Price, boards, 35 cents; cloth, 45 cents; 100 copies, boards, $30.00; cloth, $40.00. 
Sample pages free. 



PILGRIM CHILDREN'S SERVICES. Each 16 pages. Price, 5 cents. 
100 copies, $4.00. Published quarterly (Easter, Children's Day, Harvest, Christmas), 
at 20 cents per year. By M. C. Hazard. Musical Editor, John W. Tufts. The pub- 
lication of these services was begun in 1886. Any of the series can be supplied at the 
above prices. 

The phenomenal success of the Pilgrim Series of Children's Services has demon- 
strated the fact that the Sunday-schools will use good music if it is provided for them. 



ORDERS OF WORSHIP for the Sunday-school. Ten opening services, 
arranged by D. E. Curtis. Responsive readings, music from Pilgrim Songs, Pilgrim 
Services, and other sources. Bound in one volume. Price, $12.00 per 100 copies. 

The exercises consist of responsive Scripture readings, hymns, choruses, etc., ar- 
ranged to form a pleasant and helpful service. 



SPECIAL SERVICES. Arranged by Rev. Geo. H. Hubbard. Price per 100 
copies, $2.50. (a) An Easter Service. (6) Wheaton Vespers. (6 numbers.) 
An Hour with Moses the Man of God. 

An Hour with the Patriarch Job. 

An Hour with David the Psalmist. 

An Hour with Solomon the Wise Man. 
An Hour with Isaiah the Seer. 

An Hour with Jeremiah the Prophet. 

See also Duryea's Vespers, page vii. 



BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 

Ccmgresaticmal ^unUap^c^ool anU Pttbltaluns U>ocietp* 



R 



R SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARIES 



THE CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND PUBLISHING 
SOCIETY has attained an enviable reputation as publishers of the best literature 
for Sunday-school libraries. Each year several new books of this description are added 
to our list. We are glad to publish everything in this line which we deem worthy of our 
imprint, but our standard is high, and only a few mss. comparatively, out of the large 
number submitted to us, meet the necessary requirements. Such as do, we accept and 
publish, no expense being spared in the details of paper, printing, illustrating, and bind- 
ing. As a result our publications in this line are universally recognized as possessing: 
(i) literary merit, (2) originality and freshness, (3) a distinct moral purpose, (4) the 
quality of interesting the reader, (5) an attractive exterior garb. 

The criticisms often applied to Sunday-school literature, so called, have no bearing 
upon our publications ; in all the above particulars they take rank with the best issues of 
other first-class houses, both in the United States and England. A glance at some of 
our successful books is the best indication of what we are doing in this direction. The 
Pilgrim Prize Series and its companions, the Beacon Series and the Somerset Series, 
comprise eighteen of the best and most popular of our books. Our $1,000 prize offer 
brought us many first-class mss., among them the Prize Stories, Rose and Thorn and 
The Titled Mniden, the former by Katharine Lee Bates; the companion volumes 
making up the three series are worthy to stand with them. There is great variety of sub- 
ject : Stories for boys, stories for girls, stories depicting in vivid colors great historic 
events, home stories, stories of struggle and triumph, stories of study, and stories of 
work. 

Another class of books which is always welcome in the Sunday-school library is the 
well-written story of Missionary achievement. More entertaining than fiction and of the 
greatest value in awakening and fostering the missionary spirit. Such books are Morn- 
ing Light in Many Lands, Service in the King's Guards, Mrs. Caswell's Life Among 
the Iroquois Indians, Mr. Tyler's Forty Years Among the Zulus, and Skokomish, 
another Indian book. The Story of a Heathen, by H. L. Reade, and Dr. Griffis' Honda 
will interest every reader in Japan; and many others might be named. We publish 
books which will be specially prized by King's Daughters Circles and Christian Endeavor 
Societies: Mrs. Curtiss' The Silver Cross, Miss Malcolm's Ten, by M. E. Winslow, 
Billow Prairie, by Mrs. Gillette, and President F. E. Clark's own book, Some Christian 
Endeavor Saints. We have charming sets of little volumes for youngest readers, full of 
pictures and printed in large type to suit small eyes: The Weil-Spring Series, the Lake- 
view Series, Nellie's Red Book Series, Little Pharisees; then for the children a little older, 
such charming stories as Johnny Twoboys, Little Miss Boston, Little Pilgrims at Ply- 
mouth, Little Tommy, and a long list of others. 

Our publications are carried in stock by all reputable booksellers who supply books for 
home or Sunday-school reading. We will gladly send our descriptive catalogue, and we 
do not hesitate to assure all who are interested in books for young people that anything 
which has the imprint of this Society can be purchased with perfect confidence as meeting 
the conditions above stated. 

We make no reference here to other lines of publications, although we have upon our 
list many valuable works for the adult reader. Important contributions to theological 
science, notable biographies, helpful books for Bible students and teachers, works on 
Congregational polity and history. Along this line it is the purpose of the Society to 
issue whatever will be of real service to the denomination and to the churches and 
individuals composing it. 

BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 

Congregational gmniiap^djool an* ^ttblusjnng Society 



R 



ESPONSIVE READINGS AND SERVICES. 



The Book of Responsive Readings, the Form of Morning Service, and a series of 
Vesper Services (five in number), all now completed, and furnished either separately or 
bound together, supply a long-felt want in all our churches. How to enrich our forms 
of worship without destroying their simplicity and freedom; how to secure a larger 
participation and more hearty interest on the part of the congregation, are vital ques- 
tions. The Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society confidently offers the 
little manuals, edited by Dr. J. T. Duryea, as a solution of these problems. 

Dr. Duryea's preeminent fitness for such a work is well known. His musical and 
literary ability, added to a wide pastoral experience, is a guaranty of the value of these 
compilations. His refined taste and scholarship are evident on every page. 

THE RESPONSIVE READINGS are selected and arranged with the greatest 
skill. Never before have the rhythmical portions of the Scriptures been so well pre- 
sented and adapted to their original uses of worship. The divisions for alternate recita- 
tions are made so as to secure the best effect both as to sense and rhythm. 

THE FORM OF MORNING SERVICE is intended to be suggestive rather 
than arbitrary. It contains many of the ancient forms of worship -vhich centuries have 
endeared to the Christian Church, as well as some features which have commended them- 
selves in our modern churches. From this material each pastor will, according to 
circumstances, make his own selection. 

THE VESPER SERVICES (five in number) furnish Orders of Service for 
evening worship simple in arrangement, and providing for a large participation in the 
exercises on the part of the audience. The music, responsive readings, and other 
features of each Service are so planned as to secure unity, completeness, and beauty. 
These printed forms, in the hands of pastor and people, cannot fail to insure intelligent 
and hearty cooperation. 



PRICE LIST. 



Responsive Readings. Selections from the Psalms and other Scriptures in the Revised 

Version. Price, 50 cents; to churches for introduction, 100 copies, $30.00. 
A Morning Service. Pamphlet, pp. 13. Price, 3 cents; 100 copies, $2.50. 
Vesper Services. Five numbers. Each number, pamphlet, 13-16 pages. Price, 3 cents; 

100 copies, $2.50. 

Bound Together. 
Morning and Vesper Services. Pp. 71. Cloth, uniform with Responsive Readings. 

Price, 30 cents; introduction, 100 copies, $25.00. 
Responsive Readings, with Morning and Vesper Services. Pp. 203. Price, 70 cents; 

to churches for introduction, 100 copies, $40.00. 



See also Hubbard's Wheaton Vespers and Easter Service, page v. 



BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 

Congregational gmntoap^cljool anto Pttblifiljinff Society. 



HLQRIM CHURCH RECORDS 



By Rev. Geo. M. Boynton, d.d. 

A carefully prepared introduction, explaining the use of the Register to Church 
Clerks and Pastors, is one of the most valuable features of the Pilgrim Church Regis- 
ter and Record. This Introduction also contains helpful suggestions to Clerks as to 
the importance, contents, and form of the records of a church. 

This preface explains (i) how to record the organization of a Church, (2) how to make 
the records of an annual meeting, and (3) of a meeting relating to the call of a pastor. 
It tells (4) what things are important to record in the ordinary transactions of a church. 
It gives (5) certain forms for recording the organization, the approval of records, action 
on reports of committees, votes and resolutions, receptions to membership, and cases of 
discipline; and (6) refers for forms of letters missive to books which are accepted as 
authorities in all Congregational churches. It suggests the value and uses of a church 
register to pastors, and gives directions how to keep a card catalogue of the families and 
individuals comprising a parish, with a facsimile of such a card. 

Contents of the Register: 

The Register itself contains pages for: 

I. Pastors, with dates of ordination, and of beginning and close of service, and 
remarks. 
II. Deacons, with dates of service. 

III. Other Officers, with the dates and name of office held. 

IV. Delegates appointed by the church. 
V. Baptisms. 

VI. Members Received. 
VII. Members Removed. 
VIII. Marriages. 

IX. Charities and Expenses. These are arranged for each year in a perpendicular 

column, so that that the additions can be most readily made. 
X. Annual Church Statistics. This is a place for a record of the figures which 
are printed annually in the State Minutes and in the Congregational Yearbook. 
XI. Annual Statistics of the Sunday-school. 

It is believed that there is no preparation in any other volume for so complete and yet 
so condensed a register of the persons constituting a church and of the sum of their 
activities, so far as they can be expressed in figures. 



PRICE LIST. 



A. — The Pilgrim Church Register and Record. For 300 church members. With 180 
pages for Records, and with Index. Price, $2.00; postage, 66 cents extra. 

B. — The Pilgrim Church Register. For 600 church members. (Without Records), 
with Index. Price, $2.50; postage, 36 cents extra. 

C. — The Pilgrim Church Register. For 900 church members. (Without Records), with 
Index. Price, $3.00; postage, 40 cents extra. 

D. — The Pilgrim Church Register. For 1,500 church members. (Without Records), 

with Index. Price, $4.50; postage, 50 cents extra. v 

E. — The Pilgrim Church Record. 400 pages. Price, $3.00; postage, 86 cents extra. 
Letters of Dismission. Book of fifty, $1.00; postage, 8 cents. Book of one hundred, 

$2.00; postage, 15 cents. 
Baptismal Certificate. Size, 6 inches by 9 inches. Price, 5 cents. 



BOSTON AND CHICAGO: 

Ctmstesatianai gmnfcap^c&ool an* Publishing; ^otietp. 



,f2* 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



ill 

022 171 546 9 




